10 
TO OUR READERS, ETC. 
TO OUR READERS. 
Through occasional doubt and frequent dis- 
couragement, we have completed eight volumes 
of our Agricultural Journal. In this commence- 
ment of our ninth volume, we crave for a mo- 
ment, your particular attention. We ask the 
farmers to look at their relative amount of in- 
telligence in their own profession or pursuit, as 
compared with any other in the country, de- 
manding an equal investigation and acquirement. 
What means are you employing to secure that 
attainment in the principles and practice of 
your art, which is essential to your highest 
success? These are important questions and 
they are worthy of a brief answer. 
We believe the farmers are not, as a body, 
doing a tithe of what they should for the ad- 
vancement of their individual or collective 
interests ; and we further believe, that the founda- 
tion of this apathy lies in their neglect to sustain 
and read the best Agricultural Journals. Of the 
20,000,000 of our inhabitants, more than three 
fourths of whom are engaged in agricultural 
and horticultural pursuits, and most of whom 
obtain their entire support from these avoca- 
tions, not one in two thousand, and we much doubt if 
there is one in three thousand, who subscribe for and 
read a purely agricultural paper t. Subtracting fe- 
males and children from the mass, it will greatly 
diminish this enormous disproportion. Yet 
what other class of citizens would submit to 
such a general destitution ? That our fathers sub- 
sisted without agricultural papers, is no satisfac- 
tory answer. They even lived without rail-roads, 
steam-engines, and not a few without hats, boots 
or breeches. Indians and Hottentots get along 
without them now ; but the inquiry is not how 
much ignorance this pursuit will bear and yet 
be tolerated or kept alive, but how much know- 
ledge the inquiring spirit of this age should 
incorporate with it. 
How should a person know anything unless 
he is taught ? Men are not born with knowledge, 
and even in instincts they are far behind the 
brute creation. A young alligator or duckling 
betakes itself to the water with the shell 
yet on its head; but what infant ever found 
its way to the mother's breast without the assis- 
tance of its nurse ? How much less should he, 
instinctively or through his own unaided reason, 
in any successive stage of his existence, resort 
to the elaborate cultivation of the earth for a 
subsistence 1 ? Why does he manure and plow 
his field, sow his seed, and cultivate it after- 
wards, with any expectation of procuring food 
thereby ? The reply to all this simply is, he has 
been taught it. How? Sometimes by precept, 
but generally by example. In the last instance, 
the lad stands by and sees his more experienced 
companion do a certain thing ; in the former, he 
arrives at the same knowledge by reading or 
conversation. And what are the relative advan- 
tages of these two modes of learning? 
A familiarity with the use of implements, 
seeds, crops, and the manual operations of the 
farm are much more readily and effectually, 
and therefore appropriately, learned by exam- 
ple. All other knowledge may be indifferently 
learned either by seeing, hearing, or reading. 
So that he learns his business rightly, it matters 
not how the farmer comes by his information. 
In seeing, we learn just what is before us and no 
more, and we may have a very ignorant, stupid, 
or faulty teacher ; in reading, we may possibly 
have the same ; but in the last case we have 
access to twenty, fifty, or even one hundred, in 
our best agricultural journals and books instead 
of a single oral teacher ; and if he possesses any 
discrimination and judgment, he can' try each by 
all the others, and if there be ignorance, stu- 
pidity, or error, he can thus readily detect it. 
He may have the recorded experience and accu- 
mulated knowledge of the world, condensed in a 
comparatively few volumes, arranged on his 
library shelves, within convenient reach of his 
easy chair ; and the daily experiments and im- 
provements of an experimenting and improving 
age, may be regularly brought to, his door by 
the postman, in the best agricultural periodicals 
of the day. Can this be a bad, or even an indif- 
ferent mode of acquiring knowledge, in a science 
and art which combines no inconsiderable share 
of nearly all other sciences? Yet this is book- 
farming — a cant, unmeaning phrase, which igno- 
rance deems worthy to provoke derision and 
contempt whenever uttered. 
We take this bull by the horns and say, it is 
this very book-farming, which must be sought as the 
principal and almost only means of improvement in 
agriculture. What could one man, or one neigh- 
borhood, or even one State accomplish in this 
commendable career, were they to be shut out 
from all the world besides ? From the bottom 
of our hearts, we pity the man, who scorns or 
neglects the teachings of the intelligent men, 
employed wherever the art of planting is known 
and practiced, in communicating reliable discov- 
eries and improvement through the press. While 
stupidity scoffs, and jeers, it does not consider 
that nearly every particle of information it pos- 
sesses, and has so long practiced for its own 
benefit, has been derived directly or indirectly 
from tradition or books, which are but different 
caskets to hold the same jewels, though the latter 
are by far the most safe and reliable. In reflect- 
ing on this stolidity, or it may more appropriately 
be styled, ingratitude, we are reminded of the 
blunt but truthful remark of an eccentric friend, 
that a pig fills his maw with fruit or mast, 
without ever looking up to the tree which has 
furnished it. 
A Good Temper Essential to Breeding An- 
imals. — Never breed from a bad tempered animal 
if you can possibly avoid it. Good or bad tem- 
per in animals is transmitted to their offspring 
with the same certainty that a good or bad loin 
or brisket may be, or coarse legs, head or horns. 
You cannot, therefore, be too careful on this point 
as well as all others in selecting your breeding 
animals. Many a person has been killed by bad 
tempered horses and bulls, and even females 
have occasionally done serious injury. We 
think agricultural society committees ought to 
take into consideration the temper of animals, 
as well as other good or bad points, before pass- 
ing judgment upon them. 
