Agricultural and Commercial Society. 53 
knowledge and experience. That young but active 
institution, the Agricultural Board, seems to have 
mapped out for itself, too, a career of service in this 
regard, and its energy can hardly be exerted in a more 
beneficial channel. 
The small farmer is, in the main, a plodding and perse- 
vering worker. Unfortunately, this was not always so. 
There was a time when six days work every week was 
rarely bestowed upon the farm, and even now, there are 
some, happily belonging to a rapidly diminishing class, 
the state of whose cultivation brands them with the 
stigma of indolence. Those who have any knowledge 
whatever of field enterprise are aware that in a farm, 
especially where mixed cultivation exists, there is always 
something to invite the care and attention of the farmer, 
and the size of the plot under cultivation does not alter 
the rule in this respect. A few tufts of grass to be 
removed, some dry fibres to be detached, a bump or 
declivity in a drain to be levelled, a delicate plant to be 
supported and neglect of anyone of these apparently 
trifling duties, will in the long run have a palpably bane- 
ful effect upon the general prospects of the farm. The 
farmer then who pleads guilty to the charge of neglect- 
ing his cultivation, even in the veriest trifles, is the 
man whose plans will be thwarted by adverse returns. 
Most of our farmers have, by the discipline of bitter 
experience, had this salutary lesson forced home upon 
them, they are therefore weaned from the policy of 
laissez faire for which as a class they have been noted 
hitherto. 
One such farmer schooled in the art of steady and 
unbroken toil consistent with the expectation of the 
