52 
The Journal of the Royal 
market aud a disappointing return, it is a fact so patent 
as to be beyond question. Were all the features and 
failures connected with agriculture — at least that branch 
of it to which we owe the vegetables that form so 
important an element in our meals — widely known and 
fully appreciated, the small farmer would take rank in 
our minds among the most useful members of the 
community. 
A great many of the obstacles which confront the 
farmer at nearly every turn he makes undoubtedly arise 
from ignorance. He makes no attempt to bring any 
scientific knowledge to bear upon his work, for the 
simple reason that his capacity has never been trained 
to such a pitch. His knowledge of planting, of nurtur- 
ing young shoots, of tending diseased trees, is of the 
most rudimentary kind, and his practice in these matters 
is exactly along the lines followed by his ancestors, 
dating back to several generations. He is a stranger to 
time and labour-saving appliances at work in more 
enlightened agricultural communities ; and for the arrest- 
ing of plant plagues, and the adoption of ready and 
suitable devices in emergencies of drought or excessive 
moisture, he has to rely upon his own scanty, ill-informed 
experience, or a tradition received from some of his 
forefathers who, if anything, were denser tlian he. The 
recent effort of the Government to impart practical 
instructions to the farmer is a move in the right direc- 
tion and one that has met with unbounded appreciation. 
Several small farmers, with whom the writer has come 
in contact, are loud in their praises of the genial and 
patient manner in which the Assistant Superintendent of 
the Botanic Gardens 
gave 
them the benefit of his 
