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AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[April, 
Agricultural Education—Work 
That the bookworm will make a poor farmer, 
as a general rule, every body knows. However, 
he has certainly little wisdom who discards book- 
gained knowledge. To be a successful farmer 
the boy must be early trained to independent 
observation and judgment, to a reliance upon 
himself, and to see that successor failure results 
from causes, which, if he knows enough, he 
may regulate. This can never come satisfac¬ 
torily without a thorough knowledge of work. 
Every farmer will agree with us in this, and we 
have rarely known one who did not put the 
work theory into practice—and often with most 
indiscreet energy. Boj’^s are ambitious and de¬ 
light in praise. They begin tough and hearty;— 
they scorn the light work very soon;—they 
aspire to do “ the work of a man”—to be worth 
more to their fathers than any men they can 
hire;—they learn quickly how to do every kind 
of work. They hoe, and rake, and bind, and 
swing the ax, and fodder the stock, and look 
after the hired men; they save the farmers 
many steps, for—the boys never get out of 
breath, or never say so. They do harder work, 
and aspire to do the hardest. At 16, they take 
their places with the mowers; at 17, they are 
expert cradlers, and pitchers, and do every 
kind of work so well that their praise is on every 
body’s lips, and the homey handed men look 
on in astonishment to see the feats of strength 
and endurance which they show. The result is 
in a majority of cases that the boys break down; 
they strain themselves and grow out of shape, 
have fits of fainting in the fieid, headache, gid¬ 
diness, blindness; grow thin and pale, and take 
to their books, perhaps to novel reading; lose 
interest in the farm, and so after all their bril¬ 
liant promise, go into some other business, or 
make very poor farmers. We can name a score 
of very much such cases. 
There is a remedy—and it is a simple one, 
namely; more brain-work and less hand-work. 
This is easier stated than carried out, for the 
ambition of a good boy to work is constantly 
excited on the fiirm, by the results of what work 
does, continually before his eyes, and by the 
presence of laborers who will inevitably encour¬ 
age the greatest outlays of energy and strength 
on his part. lie has no such incitements to 
study on the farm, and in fact, much work and 
much study are entirely incompatible. The 
weary body demands rest, in which the mind 
must participate. Nevertheless, the evil of over¬ 
working boys is so great that we must, even 
again and again, caution parents, and the boys 
themselves, against it, as one notable cause of 
so many inferior farmers. 
But very few farmers can afford to give their 
sons anything more than what is called “ A 
Common School Education ”—that is, as regards 
book learning. Almost none, however, are so 
straightened in means that they can not have 
good books and papers. They can throw upon 
their sons the responsibility of learning what 
other people think and say about this or that 
crop, or practice, or way of treating crops, or 
about the insects which may annoy them, and 
about a thousand-and-one things which may be 
made the subjects of investigation upon the farm. 
Besides, a farmer needs a knowledge of many 
other kinds of work—not straightforward farm¬ 
ing —and the young farmer’s winters can hardly 
be spent to better advantage than in acquiring 
familiarity with one or more trades. Tlie writer 
well remembers the months spent in the cabinet 
maker’s shop in learning the use of tools. He 
was not of much use to the cabinet maker, but 
the knowledge gained has been worth a great 
deal to him ever since. We advise any young 
farmer who can get such a place to give 
two or even six months labor gratuitously 
to the blacksmith in his shop, or to the carpen¬ 
ter, or to the sadler, or to the wheelwright, 
and to do so every winter, until a good insight 
is gained of these trades. In a stony country, 
where wall laying is an important accomplish¬ 
ment, time should be taken to learn this, and 
there is some opportunity almost every season, 
to learn practically the principles of framing 
houses, or joiner work. The use of this prac¬ 
tical education in different kinds of work does 
not make a fiirmer a “ Jack-of-all-trades,” but it 
makes him at least a better judge of other men’s 
work, and a much better and “ handier” farmer. 
-- 
Temperature at which Seeds Germinate. 
The celebrated Swiss botanist, M. A. He Can¬ 
dolle, has published an account of numerous 
experiments upon the temperature at which 
seeds will germinate. We give a few of his re¬ 
sults, with respect to well known plants, re¬ 
ducing the temperature to the Fahrenheit scale. 
The seed of common White Mustard will ger¬ 
minate at or a little below the freezing point. 
While white clover remained dormant at 41J°, 
it germinated when the temperature was raised 
only one degree above that, Indian corn would 
not start at 42°, but germinated at a tempera¬ 
ture very near 48°. Melon seeds refused to 
germinate at 55°, but did below 62$°. While 
there is a limit of temperature below which 
each particular seed will not germinate, there 
is also a limit in the other direction, and seeds 
fail to start when the temperature is too high— 
the point, as in the other case, varying with the 
species; the greater part of some seeds of 
white clover did not germinate above 822 °. 
“ Thus seeds only germinate between certain 
limits of temperature, and those which can 
only do so within narrow limits are least able 
to extend themselves geographically.” 
--— Ma i— - . - 
General View of Southern Agriculture. 
BY JOSEPH B. LYMAN, RECENTLY OF NEW-ORLEANS. 
[Note. —The interest manifested by many of- 
our subscribers to know more of the Southern 
States, with a view to going thither to make 
there homes for themselves and their children, 
induces us to publish the following letter, re¬ 
peating our own opinion, previously expressed 
in the Agricultxmst, that it is very desirable for 
Northern families to locate in groups of several 
together, for the sake especially of society, 
schools, postal facilities (taking turns to go for 
the mails), neighborhood libraries, and religious 
exercises, and last, not least, for the maintain- 
ence of a healthy public opinion, at least, among 
themselves. Northern men will encounter some 
acrimony and bitterness of feeling, expressed in 
looks, words and deeds, but with good principles 
and kindness, they will live it down. —Eds.] 
The advantages that are presented to the 
farmer and the capitalist, through the recent so¬ 
cial changes that have occurred in eleven great 
States of this Union, are a matter of constant 
inquiry. Wiiat class of lands have been opened 
by the action of the war and its settlement, 
the price of good lands in that region, the 
productions for which it is best suited, the cli¬ 
mate and salubrity of various sections, are sub¬ 
jects of great interest to our young men, the 
disbanded soldiers who are exchanging the 
musket for the plow, and to the emigrants who 
constantly swarm upon our shores. 
However the social and political status of the 
African may be affected by Congressional action, 
or by the vote of States, two great changes have 
been wrought by the destruction of slavery, 
whose influence upon the future of these States 
in the increase of material welfare, and all the 
elements of prosperity, are incalculable. 
First .—The dishonor that has hitherto at¬ 
tached to manual labor, as the badge of social 
degradation, has been forever wiped out. 
Second .—The great system of centralization 
and monopoly, that massed the lands of the 
South in farms of from five hundred to five 
thousand acres and more, if not wholly broken 
up, has suffered such a change, with the change 
of the labor system, that it must decay, and the 
lands be divided, as in the more Northern States; 
into farms that average from 60 to 80 acres. 
With the ownership of the soil by the intelli¬ 
gent laborer, erecting there his permanent home, 
the most beneficent changes in the economy of 
agriculture will be introduced. The slave¬ 
working planter felt little or no attachment to 
the soil from which he derived his revenues. 
Laud with him was like the plow, something 
to be used, worn out, and then thrown away. 
Under the new system, based on sounder ethics, 
the soil will be regarded as it is in England, 
and in the most advanced parts of this countiy, 
as something to be kept, improved, not abused, 
and handed down to descendants in such a 
condition that by their labor and economy it 
may continue to yield its successive and abun¬ 
dant harvests. 
By looking at a map, it will be seen' that a 
little below the southern line of Tennessee 
there is a dividing ridge, north of which the 
waters make their way to the Ohio, and toward 
the South the region drains into the Gulf of 
Mexico. This line represents the cotton zone, 
north of which, generally speaking, cotton is 
not a profitable crop, at common prices, and 
south of which it is the ruling staple, and in 
some parts, almost the sole agricultural product. 
But nearly half the area of the Southern States, 
and more than half the population is north of 
the cotton zone. In other words, one half of 
the Southern States is a grain-growing and 
stock-raising country, where the agrieulture 
does not differ in any essential respect from that 
of other parts of the countiy. The immigrant 
from the Northern States to this region, is not 
a pupil, but a teacher of the old resident. He 
brings improved methods of culture, labor-saving 
machines, and a far better sj^stem of economy. 
The chief advantage that he can enjoy in the 
southern latitudes, is the mildness of the cli¬ 
mate that requires so much less provision in 
order to winter his stock, and the corresponding 
length of the summer, that enables him to take, 
in many instances, two crops from the same' 
soil. To obtain the best conception of the cli¬ 
mate of the grain-growing parts of the South, 
you are to conceive of a New-England winter, 
witii the months of December, .Tanuary and 
February left out. Take the Aveather of our No¬ 
vember and our March, and j'ou have the Avin- 
ter of Southern Kentucky, Tennessee, Northern 
Virginia, and North Carolina. It is a Avinter in 
Avhich tAvo months of feeding Avill suffice for 
sheep and young cattle, a Aviuter Avhich allows 
of Avork on the face of the soil, in clearing, fenc¬ 
ing, ditching, and hauling of manures every 
month, and frequently evezy week, from the 
time the leaves fall until grass comes again. The 
longer summers allow a crop of corn to mature, 
if planted at once after wheat harvest in June. 
