AGRICULTURAL PUBLICATIONS. 
301 
AGRICULTURAL PUBLICATIONS. 
I hail the monthly issue of the American Agri¬ 
culturist and kindred journals, with quite as much 
interest and anxiety, I have no doubt, as many of 
your commercial men do the arrival of the Great 
Western, Acadia, &c., from over the Atlantic, 
whieh I suppose will argue, without farther proof, 
that I am decidedly in favor of agricultural publi¬ 
cations, or “ book-farming as some of our wor¬ 
thy farmers are pleased to term it. I am happy 
to add that I am, and that I conceive it to be my 
interest to seize every opportunity offered me to 
peruse such works: not only that I may profit by 
the experience of others, who may be better in¬ 
formed than myself, but that I may become 
acquainted with useful facts, which will enable 
me to advocate and defend a cause I know to be 
fraught with interests, teeming with everything 
that is noble and good. But useful and valuable 
as such works are, and of necessity should be; and 
as much as I believe the farmers in my own sec¬ 
tion, as well as in many other parts of the country, 
have been benefited and their farms improved by 
the perusal of them; and as much as I respect 
and esteem their many able contributors, yet I 
have a word to offer in the way of complaining. 
I have hinted that many good things have been 
spread abroad through the medium of agricultural 
publications, for which I honor their able conduct¬ 
ors, yet against many good things contained therein 
I am bound to enter my solemn protest; and if 
you have the patience to bear with me at all, I 
must without farther ceremony descend to par¬ 
ticulars. 
I have long considered my objections of a serious 
nature, inasmuch as I believe they affect a more 
extended circulation of these valuable works; and, 
consequently, a great amount of useful information 
is shut out from the very class of people who most 
need it. 
First, I shall refer to the very many hard words 
made use of by scientific writers; also to the very 
indefinite and elaborate way many writers have of 
expressing their ideas, (a) One instance at hand 
may suffice to explain my meaning. When I 
opened the July number of your paper, I noticed 
an article on the “ Culture of Tobacco,” which to 
cultivate successfully, the writer said required “an 
abundant supply of saline matter,” and “ a suffi¬ 
cient source of ammonia.” Now I am not going 
to charge the body of our farmers as being inex¬ 
cusably ignorant; I would scorn to offer such an 
insult; but a great many of them are plain, prac¬ 
tical, working men—men who have had much to 
struggle against and much to contend for—hardy 
pioneers who have had to carve out their perilous 
track through forests of wood and stone—veterans 
who have had to follow the plow instead of tread¬ 
ing our college courts; such are many of the real 
owners of the soil through our country, men who 
are willing to read, yet not such Greek as I have 
quoted—they want to come right at the plain thing 
at Gnce. Now of such, who knows what “ saline 
matter” is ? Does it mean salt ? then why not say 
salt at once and be done with it; everybody knows 
wkat salt is* and surely any one could understand 
a man if he said one bushel of salt to the acre 
would benefit a certain crop, (b) 
Secondly, the writer adds, “ a sufficient source 
of ammonia.” Now who knows what “ammo¬ 
nia” is? And who can tell what quantity to 
the acre “ a sufficient source” is ? And after 
reading the article, what farmer could go into 
his field and tell whether “ a sufficient source 
of ammonia” existed in that soil or not ? Now 
is the farmer benefited by such reading ? On 
the contrary, is he not more firmly set against 
such works. Well, I asked who knows what 
“ammonia” is? Says one, “go to Walker’s 
Dictionary.” Well, we go there, and find “ am¬ 
monia” is “ volatile alkali .” Now the reader is 
just about as much enlightened as he was be¬ 
fore. (c ) Says another, “ why, there is many a 
one knows what ‘ ammonia 1 is ; but if he don’t, 
he ought to know.” Admit it. Now I don’t 
insist upon it that a great majority of your sub¬ 
scribers could not find out what “ammonia” was, 
but I simply adduce this specimen as one among 
a hundred others, equally unintelligible to the 
class of readers to whom I allude. Neither do I 
look upon agricultural publications as designed for 
learned or unlearned men alone. I would have 
them plain and practical, equally intelligible to 
all. ( d) 
It is for the plain, hard-fisted farmer, who to 
read understandingly wants the plain English be¬ 
fore him; that is the respectable class of citizens 
I plead for; they are the men to be really bene¬ 
fited. Now this is no mere theory ; I honestly 
believe it to be an existing incumbrance in the 
way of a more extensive improvement. I know 
I shall have scientific men up in arms against me ; 
nevertheless, I believe I assert the truth when I 
say, that three fourths of our hard-working farmers 
are not scientific men ; consequently, the very 
class of men who need the most information, 
get the least. If this is really an important 
objection, and it could be done away with, if scien¬ 
tific men would write plain articles, couched in 
plain language, and every reader could be made to 
feel at home, I believe the advantages to the farm¬ 
ing community would be ten-fold. Now we are 
not interested in the “ Culture of Tobacco” here in 
Jersey ; I for one never saw tobacco growing, and 
have no idea how it grows or what itjooks like, (e) 
Had the article I have taken the liberty to allude 
to been headed “ On the Culture of Corn,” nine 
tenths of our farmers, though deeply interested in 
its culture, after reading the first three or four 
lines, would have dropped the article and passed it 
by. Not because the article is not good and 
worthy of consideration, and one that reflects 
great credit on its author, but because we have a 
large class of readers that can not appreciate it. 
Again, in articles headed, “ On the Application 
of Gypsum,” I myself neglected for a long while 
to peruse them under this caption, because I quite 
took it for granted that “gypsum” was some for¬ 
eign article, known and applied in perhaps every 
nook and corner of the globe but Jersey. Now if 
“ gypsum” is more commonly called “ plaster-ot- 
Paris,” why not say so ? We have no other name 
for that substance here; and indeed, I can not see 
