374 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
An Educatiou Good Enough for a Farmer. 
The best education is none too good. Who 
sets out second-rate fruit, if he can get first-rate ? 
or who sows poor wheat if he can get the best ? 
What is the best educatiou that a Farmer can 
have? Truly, tliat which will fit him for most 
successfully tilling the soil, for business inter- 
course with men, for taking a creditable 
position in society, for serving best his fel- 
lowmen and honoring his God. To help 
us to decide what course of mental culture— 
for that 13 what we generally mean bj' educa- 
tion, — will best accomplish these ends, let us see 
what men are the best farmers, and what their 
education has been. As a general thing, we 
believe that among those farmers who work with 
their own hands more or less, and are not mere- 
1}' proprietors of estates which they may or may 
not personally manage, — those not bred to the 
business of farming, are by far most successful. 
Many of them were born ou the farm, and oth- 
ers took to farming after learning other busi- 
ness. Is then the education which the farmer- 
boy picks up after he leaves the farm, while he 
is at work in the machine shop, slioving the 
jack-plane, or behind the counter, the best he 
can have ? No, indeed ; but he gains something 
which makes him a better farmer than his neigh- 
l)or3. Premising that he would not have re- 
turned to farming, or taken it up if he had not 
a love for it, he has probably gained, in the 
shop or stove,— First, a just estimate of the val- 
ue of accurate accounts, of knowing the pecu- 
niary success or failure of the simplest ventures ; 
iSecond, a high estimation of the value of knowl- 
edge of one's business, which makes him read 
and think, as well as work: Third, liberality in 
regard to the views and opinions of others. It 
has made him quick witted also, and not set in 
his own way. Besides, contact with men has 
given him confidence in himself when he knows 
where he stands, and a lack of confidence when 
he is not sure of his ground. Such a man will 
always succeed as a farmer. lie maybe dread- 
fully green for a year or two, but in a short 
time he will beat the old farmers out and out. 
If our readers will testify, they will confirm what 
we say, and point out neighbors of theirs that 
they used to laugh at for their blunders and 
cityfied farming, which, perhaps, was half book 
farming and half guesswork, who now are be- 
j'ond being laughed at ; or at least the laugh is 
on the other side. These men have gained 
their farming education by the hardest. Our 
boys ought to have a better chance. 
The Home School is where the boy gets his 
first notions and principles, and these will have 
their eff'ect upon him to the day of his death. 
TM Common ScJu/ol is where the foundations 
are laid of whatever literary or book education 
the boy ever gains, together with the establish- 
ment of correct habits of study and thought, a 
taste for mathematics, quickness at figures, etc. 
The High School, whether it be Academy, 
College, or Agricultural College, is supposed to 
bring the young man forward to the threshhold 
of mature life with knowledge enough to ena- 
ble him to make a good start, and with such 
habits of study and thought that he will always 
value knowledge and seek it. Finally there is — 
The School of Experience, in which we are all 
pupils and always have been, from the time we 
first learned we could not reach the moon, and 
that the candle-flame was too hot a place for 
our fingers. It is in the school of experience 
that men educate themselves in their judg- 
ment of probabilities. In the estimation of men 
for what they are worth, and in many other 
things which have a great influence on their 
success or failure, superiority or mediocrity in 
whatever business they follow. 
This last excepted, the other schools mention- 
tioned are named in order of their importance 
in forming character and developing the mind. 
The boy should have the best instruction where 
and when this development takes place. The 
best teachers are by no means those who 
know the most, they are those who inspu'c the 
child, or youth, with a desire to do best, and to 
learn most, those who guide the yonug mind 
into those channels in which it can and will 
pursue useful knowledge with zest. A child of 
fourteen well started, will do well under poor 
teachers, after that. We propose to discuss 
these three schools in other articles. 
Western Agriculture. 
m 
" C. S. W.," a " York State Farmer " and 
pioneer in Scott County, Iowa, sends to the 
American Agriculturist his views: 
" Agriculture in Iowa differs materially in all 
its departments from the long established sys- 
tems of the Eastern States. Theoretical farm- 
ing finds little encouragement here ('); ourmost 
successful and intelligent farmers are those 
who have in a general way discarded theories, 
and applied themselves to a faithful study of 
the nature and characteristics of the soil. 
Within the past ten years our farmers have 
gradually adopted the opinion that our soil has 
its peculiar and fi.xed constitution, and that it is 
essential to acquaint ourselves with its local 
laws. We have but little faith in auy of the 
popular disquisitions on acids and alkalies, and 
how to preserve the equipoise of their relations, 
for we daily discover the abundance of in- 
consistences in theories originating in regions 
possessing few features in common with our 
own. Any of our old settlers would give you 
a series of facts that would upset a multitude of 
the ideas advanced by Liebig, Mechi, etc. My 
own farm is probably one of the oldest in the 
State, and I have fields that have been almost 
uninterruptedly cultivated in corn for thirty- 
three j-ears, and yet the annual yield, by actual 
measurement, ranges from 75 to 100 bushels [of 
ears, no doubt. Ed.] per acre. (^ This year the 
stalks average over eleven feet in hight, and the 
corn yield promises to exceed its usual average. 
The laud is high and dry, and was never ma- 
nured. And this is the usual, I might say uni- 
versal, fertility of Iowa soil. ' Gradual im- 
poverishment' is very slow in its operation 
here. Of late years we are beginning to believe 
that Iowa soil is rich in the elements that con- 
tribute to fruit growing, and orchards are be- 
coming popular, and are almost invariably suc- 
cessful. We get apples in eight years after 
planting the seed, or more practically speaking, 
standard fruit-trees, as usually sent out from the 
nurseries, bear fruit within four years, and an 
orchard si.x years old yields a profitable crop. 
Four years' growth, with cultivation, gives our 
fruit-trees a diameter of from three to five inches. 
It is, however, noticeable that few of the East- 
ern varieties retain their prominent characteris- 
tics when grown here. The greenings and pip- 
pins of ' old York State,' degenerate into very 
ordinary fruit in Iowa. But we have our own 
peculiar apples that leave us little cause to re- 
gret that grafts from the old homesteads of our 
youth, do not give us the fruit that tasted so 
well in our boyhood. Systematic and judicious 
land culture in Iowa is uchly rewarded, and our 
best farmers are those who, ou the sterile fields 
of their former homes, were forced to acquire 
habits of industry, observation and reflection. 
These invariably meet success in the West, and 
it is this fact that offers so much encouragement 
to the immigration of our Eastern friends. It 
is strange that more of the surplus population 
of the large cities do not seek the West, with 
its certainly of comfortable homes and a fair 
chance for wealth. A New Yorker myself, 
I know how many intelligent mechanics, busi- 
ness men, small capitalists, etc., are wasting life 
there, struggling for the daily bread and assured 
welfare, that are so easily obtained in Iowa (') ; 
obtained too, without the sacrifice of any East- 
ern privilege, for churches, schools, and news- 
papers here abound, and the Agriailturist sheds 
its kindly rays on us within forty-eight hours 
after its issue in New York." 
[We can not let our correspondent have his 
say without adding a word. (1) All men who 
cultivate the soil have some sort of theories, at 
least a kind of reasoning founded on guesswork ; 
and the men who declaim loudest against 
theories have the most of these very peculiar 
kinds. Even Iowa farmers, plow and sow, 
raise grain and roots, and grass, and feed cattle 
and sheep ; aud at the East we do so too. 
Practice and facts never hurt a good theory j'et, 
and never will. The experience of 10 or 33 
years in Iowa and other States may show that 
the land is not exhausted yet. There is laud in 
Connecticut that has been cropped longer than 
that, without exhausting it, and so there is in Eng- 
land. — This does not militate against any correct 
theory however. Continual cropping does tend 
to impoverish the soil. The larger the crops, the 
more rapid the impoverishment. Slanuring does 
maintain the fertility of the poorest land, and it 
increases and improves the crops upon the best 
natural soils. — (3) Good fiirmers out West may be 
entirely satisfied with 75 or 100 bushels of ears per 
acre, but we of the East do not consider it much. 
When we get 80 or 100 bushels of shelled corn 
measured in November, then we begin to brag. 
(3) C. S. W. can hardly be better informed about 
the condition of Eastern mechanics, etc., and 
the wages they are getting, than he is in regard 
to the theories of acids and alkalis he has such 
a horror of ; for the West with all its fertility 
as ageneral rule presents few or no inducements 
to the classes of persons named, which will 
compare at all with the pecuniary prospects 
presented here. But there are other classes — 
enterprising young farmers, with capital, and 
without, foreigners not mechanics, and all sorts 
of men without trades. Such men will usually 
better themselves by going West, or South. — En. 
A Private Park with Five Acres of Land. 
In the unequal distribution of tastes, it oflen 
happens that those who are best fitted to enjoy 
rural life, are the least able to do so, aud many 
a merchant or mechanic toils on in city or vil- 
lage in the hope that the time may one day 
come when his desire for a quiet retreat m.ay be 
filled. How many such have studied all the 
best works on landscape gardening, in anticipa- 
tion of the time wheu they could lay out 
grounds otherwise than on paper. How many 
such have visited the "show places" of the 
wealthy, where acres of lawn, miles of perfect 
drive, beautiful pictures of tree grouping have 
shown how lovely earth can be made if one only 
has the means. There is the disheartening 
thing about the whole matter, that but few cau 
