518 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
once, but separately. They would not have 
enjoyed a common talk, but each alone liked 
to help this beginner—and many a ride he 
took to their houses for advice, and the habits 
he then formed of inquiry into farm man¬ 
agement never left him. At school he had 
studied Chemistry as then taught, and could 
understanding^ read Liebig’s works, which 
about that time, startled the world by at¬ 
tempting to reduce agriculture to a science. 
Agricultural newspapers were diligently read, 
and much hard work of mind and body was 
done by this man ; farming paid, and he be¬ 
came an enthusiastic lover of the business. 
Although the hopes held out by Liebig, that 
farming might itself be reduced to a science 
have not been realized, yet much good did 
he do, by promoting investigation ; and the 
great improvements that have been made 
within the lives of many of us, may be said 
to have commenced about the time he be¬ 
gan writing, and this young farmer had the 
good fortune to commence his career just at 
this interesting period. 
I need hardly say, that my purpose in 
giving these instances, has been to show that 
fanning is a business which demands a 
special education, as much as any other, and 
that whoever is thinking of going into this 
business, or of putting a son into it, must 
know that without this education, failure is 
quite likely to follow. 
The Literature of Agriculture. 
BT ,T. B. ROEERTS, PROF. OF AGRICULTURE. CORNELL 
UNIVERSITY, ITHACA. N. Y. 
- 
While every other modern science, taught 
in our colleges, has its standard text-books to 
which the professor can point his students 
as a foundation for his lectures and practical 
work, Agriculture, alone, has almost none of 
a reliable character. That this science has a 
great, if not greater need than others, of such 
works, cannot be doubted, when the compre¬ 
hensive extent of both its theory and prac¬ 
tice are considered. Its field of investigation 
is wider, and no less deep, than that of Bot¬ 
any, Zoology, or even Veterinary Science. 
Therefore, not only does the professor need 
such standard works, but also the student, 
when he leaves College and goes back to the i 
farm ; while more than either does the ordi¬ 
nary farmer need them who has not had the 
advantages of a collegiate education, but who 
desires to improve his methods of farming. 
As yet, comparatively few farmers realize 
this deficiency, but the professor and student 
are becoming rapidly aware of it. 
The cause of this lack of easily attainable 
and reliable information, lies in the fact that 
Agriculture has not been recognized as a sci¬ 
ence until within the last twenty years. Up 
to the present there has been only one man 
in a thousand who consciously strove to im¬ 
prove his cattle, enrich his land, or enlarge 
his crops. The efforts after progress have 
been made in so blind and ignorant a man¬ 
ner that Agriculture has lagged far behind 
other sciences. Systematic investigation and 
experiment, until lately, have been almost un¬ 
known in agricultural pursuits ; every farm¬ 
er has been more or less vigorously repeating 
the experience of every other farmer, when, 
if the experience of any one had been accu¬ 
rately written down, an immense amount of 
time and labor would have been saved. 
The first requisite of any good library is a 
comprehensive Cyclopaedia of recent date. 
So far as I know, we have none of Agricul¬ 
ture that has been revised within the last 
eight or ten years. Morton’s, which was re¬ 
printed in 1874, is an English work, and 
therefore almost wholly unadapted to this 
country. Another, which has an American 
revision, is not recent enough to be valuable. 
None of these are large enough; the im¬ 
mense scope of the subject requires a far 
more extensive treatment, in order that each 
topic may be given with sufficient fulness 
to make it reliable as a work of reference. 
It needs the devotion of the best part of some 
man’s lifetime, and of thousands of dollars, 
to produce a work of four or five thousand 
pages, suitable to the Agriculture of both 
Europe and America. 
On corn, the cereals, weeds and grasses, we 
have almost no reliable works ; in fact, very 
few of any character. In saying so much, 
we do not forget that our botanists have given 
us much valuable information concerning 
weeds and grasses, but it is purely concern¬ 
ing the generic differences and structural pe- 
cularities. They do not tell us how to eradi¬ 
cate the one, nor how to improve the other. 
The so-called grasses, Timothy, Clover, Or¬ 
chard-grass, etc., are sown year after year, 
without any effort at selection of varieties, 
or the slightest idea of improvment. Scav¬ 
enger-weeds, such as the daisy, are analyzed 
and classified, and their peculiarities of 
growth and location noted, but nowhere do 
we find full and reliable information as to 
how they may be eradicated. We need works 
in which shall be combined the special, accu¬ 
rate knowledge of the botanist and the prac¬ 
tical experience of the farmer, gained by 
persistent and careful experimentation. In 
stock-breeding and horticulture we are fur¬ 
ther advanced than in other branches of Ag¬ 
riculture ; on these subjects we have quite a 
number of eminent and trustworthy writers, 
But in this general wail over the dearth of 
farm literature, we must not forget or ignore 
our Agricultural Journals. Both those of a 
general, and those of a special character, are 
doing an increasingly useful work. They do 
in some measure fill the want, but the infor¬ 
mation which they contain, is of such a frag¬ 
mentary character, and so inconveniment to 
use, that it cannot take the place of syste¬ 
matic knowledge, properly collected and ar¬ 
ranged. To whom shall we look for supply ? 
The professors in our Agricultural Colleges, 
under the present system, have no time for 
literary pursuits. They can scarcely find 
time to publish the results of their experi¬ 
ments in the most concise form. None of the 
graduates of our Agricultural Colleges have 
experimented sufficiently long to fit them for 
the work ; ultimately we must look to the 
well-to-do, thoroughly educated and practi¬ 
cal farmers for the books which are to be the 
standards for this generation. There are now 
not a few farmers who have the time, money, 
and trained ability to experiment in special 
directions, and to publish the results in an ac¬ 
curate and permanent form. 
We cannot flatter any one that such an en¬ 
terprise would prove lucrative in a pecuniary 
point of view; but here is a great field open 
to thoroughly scientific agriculturists. Those 
who shall take up this work will be doing a 
great and inestimable service to the farming, 
as well as the strictly scientific, community. 
A Device for Tightening Wire. 
A “ Subscriber ” sends sketches of a wire 
tightener, and the following explanation: 
“There are two round sticks, a, two feet 
Fig. 1. —POSITION WHILE TIGHTENING. 
long, and b, 18 inches in length, and l'/ 2 inch 
in diameter ; w represents the wire. Make a 
loop in the wire to be tightened, and place the 
longest stick through the loop, with the short 
one in the position shown in figure 1. Hold 
the short stick with one hand, and turn the 
Fig. 2. —THE WIRE TIGHTENED. 
other in the direction of the arrow until the 
wire is tight, when the whole is secured in 
place by a piece of wire, c, as shown in fig. 2. 
Experience with Durra. 
In February, 1877, we gave a rather full ac¬ 
count of the grain-bearing forms of Sorghum 
vulgare, selecting among its many names that 
of Durra as the most desirable. In May, 1879, 
we described some of the leading varieties 
that were offered by seedsmen as “ Egyptian 
Corn,’’ “ China Corn,” etc. This grain, which 
in some Eastern countries forms a large share 
of the food of the population, has been cul¬ 
tivated and has met with some favor on our 
Pacific Coast. In the older States it has been 
grown to some extent for its herbage, and for 
its grain as food for poultry and domestic 
animals. Having very little testimony as to 
the utility of this grain for human food, we 
were very glad to get the following account 
from a lady in Jacksonville, Ill., who signs 
herself “A Fifteen Years' Subscriber” : 
“I planted about 80 hills, 4 by 4 feet apart, 
and gathered three barrels of the heads. We 
cooked the grain like rice or hominy, and 
found it superior in delicate flavor to the lat¬ 
ter ; we like it very much as a breakfast dish, 
but it takes so long to cook. Some man or 
company should start an establishment for 
steaming it, as is done with the cracked wheat 
and oats. It is too good a food to be used ex¬ 
clusively for the lower animals, and as it is 
so very productive, can not fail to be a boon 
to the poor. One seedsman’s catalogue states 
that a grower in California claims to have 
raised 200 bushels to the acre. My land was a 
clover sod, plowed only once, this spring, har¬ 
rowed and cross-harrowed, hence not in very 
good condition,but the Durra stood the drouth 
splendidly ; it was plowed once after coming 
up. I am so well pleased with this grain, that I 
intend to try the Branching Durra next year.” 
