Weeds of Agriculturists—To breed Males or Females. 
ist 
ease, which so sweetly sets upon us, ra- 
visheth our senses, lulles our soules asleep, 
puffes up our hearts as so many bladders, and 
that without all feeling, in so much those that 
are misaffected with it never so much as once 
perceive it, or think of any cure” 
I would give you still more on the same 
topic, from this truly original writer, together 
with his numerous and admirable illustrations 
of the effects of self-conceit; but neither time 
nor the limits of my letter will permit. 
The two next mental weeds which I will 
notice, although entirely opposite in their 
effects, are equally injurious, equally hard to 
eradicate. Their Latin and English names 
are so much alike, that I shall call them only 
by the latter,— Credulity, and Incredulity. The 
effect of the first is to dispose the mind to a 
constant change of seed, without the power 
to discriminate between the good and the 
bad ; and to suffer none to grow long enough 
to ascertain its real properties. The opera¬ 
tion of the second is to keep the mind in what 
an illiterate blockhead of a congressman, 
whom I formerly knew, used to call “ the 
state of statu quo.” In other words, it causes 
the mind to reject seed of every kind but 
that of its own choosing, and to which it has 
always been accustomed. Every new thing 
it derides, without examination, or treats it 
with the utmost scorn and contempt. 
The last weed in my catalogue is Sagnitia , 
sloth or laziness. This operates on the mind 
nearly as dead palsy does on the body. For, 
although the former is not deprived of all 
sensibility, as is the latter, yet the mental 
feeling is so slight, even from the most sti¬ 
mulating appliances, that no sensible effect 
scarcely ever flows from them. If good seed 
are received at all, they will scarcely ever be 
sown; but if sown , they will never be culti¬ 
vated in any such manner as to render the 
least service, either to the owner or to any 
body else. In short, the mind infested with 
this weed soon becomes nearly as incapable 
of intellectual effort as an oyster; and falls 
into a condition quite as hopeless as if it were 
at the same time filled with all the other 
weeds which I have described. Nothing but 
great bodily suffering will impel it to action, 
and as soon as that suffering is relieved, it 
instantly collapses into its former state of 
utter listlessness and torpidity. 
You, gentlemen, and the rest of your bro¬ 
ther editors throughout the United States, 
who have so laudably devoted yourselves to 
the great pause of American husbandry, and 
to whom I most cordially wish every success 
which your hearts can desire, may write and 
print to the end of your lives in behalf of that 
cause ; but you may rely, with absolute cer¬ 
tainty, upon what I now say,—that unless 
you can discover some method to rid our 
minds of all the weeds I have been laboring 
to describe, your efforts will have far less 
success than they well deserve to have. Just 
as soon might you expect to teach an ele¬ 
phant to dance on a tight-rope, or to make 
an honest man of a thorough-bred politician, 
as to make good farmers either of the wil¬ 
fully ignorant, the obstinate, the self-con¬ 
ceited, the credulous, the incredulous, or the 
confirmed victims of sloth. Very few of 
them are within the reach of any curative 
medicine which agricultural papers can ad¬ 
minister,—for the very best reason in the 
world, they will not read them. And were 
it possible to ascertain their present numbers, 
I fear we should find that, take them all to¬ 
gether, they constitute little, if any, less than 
one-third of our whole class. 
And now, Messrs. Editors, in bidding you 
farewell, permit me to assure you very sin¬ 
cerely, that I have no such feelings of pater¬ 
nity for this communication, nor shall I have 
for any other, should I ever address you 
again, as would lead me to desire its publi¬ 
cation, unless you yourselves should really 
deem it worth publishing. On no other con¬ 
dition whatever do I wish to appear in your 
paper. I must therefore beg you to rest per¬ 
fectly assured, that its non-admittance therein 
will “break no squares” between yourselves 
and your agricultural friend, 
Examiner. 
We can assure our friend Examiner who, by the by 
is one of the most distinguished leaders in the agricultu¬ 
ral improvements of the present day, that nothing is 
more appropriate for the community than his home 
thrust description above, of the mental weeds that op¬ 
pose such peculiar obstacles to agricultural advance¬ 
ment. But we can hope to eradicate them only by the 
inductive process. What has not been reasoned in, can¬ 
not be reasoned out. The only chance for success with 
them, is that the practices and improvements of then- 
neighbors who do read and have capacity to apply their 
information, will gradually take the place of their own. 
When they find those, who have commenced under the 
same circumstances as themselves, by a more enlight¬ 
ened and judicious system of tillage, crops, new and 
improved varieties of seeds and animals, are getting rich 
while they are growing poor on their old and favorite 
systems— then, and then only can we hope to move them 
to the adoption of a wiser course. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
To breed Males or Females. 
Gent 1 The rule given at page 83 of your 
paper, for breeding male or female animals at 
pleasure, would often be convenient to far- 
' mers, if capable of certainty in practice. The 
