310 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Sept, 
men who in all parts of the country stand pre-eminent 
for their good crops, for their fine stock, and for their 
admirable management, are precisely the men who are 
most ready to acknowledge their obligations to science, 
and who have the most frequent recource to books for 
assistance and advice in every operation. This is a most 
unfortunate obstacle, but nevertheless one that actually 
exists; it is unfortunate because it ties the unimproved, 
entirely practical farmer, down to a narrow field. By 
condemning study he condemns all the results of study, 
unless he means to adopt the results of others’ researches 
in anu nderhanded way ; he cannot, of course, do this con¬ 
sistently, for if he once acknowledges that any one by 
study can make improvements in farming, it follows that 
he himself might also do something in the same way, 
and so this whole system of purely practical education 
falls to the ground. The unimproved system, then, not 
only shuts out books and studj r , but the results which 
others derive from them ; this is obviously the only con¬ 
sistent course. If carried out entirely and fully, the 
advocates of the letting alone system would have occa¬ 
sion to rejoice in the sudden suspension of all progress 
that would ensue. They would be forever freed from 
all the urgent solicitors who beg that they will subsoil, 
drain, and clear their land, who desperately force upon 
them their prescriptions for concentrated and special 
manures, and who back their recommendations with 
facts and figures that are occasionally of a most stubborn 
character. The young farmers would be left to grow 
up in utter ignorance of the word improvement, and 
would scarcely possess more ideas than the team that 
they drive, as to the practicability of making any use¬ 
ful change in the old customs to which they had been 
trained. 
Without books, without study, without lectures, the 
knowledge of any little advance which might occur here 
and there, would be as slowly diffused as it formerly was 
among the aboriginal inhabitants, and centuries hence 
would see our agriculture scarcely any better than now. 
This is no exaggeration; if we could blot out all of the 
works on agriculture, all of the periodicals, and stop all 
lectures on the scientific bearings of this subject, advance 
would be checked at once and forever, or at least for as 
long a time as such system should prevail. 
While those who engage in other pursuits would be 
constantly improving, constantly discovering new means 
of successful and economical application of their labor, 
the farmers would remain at a stand, and would serve 
as an abiding representation of long passed ages. 
Such is the fairest statement that I can make for the 
unimproved farmer; such I consider the legitimate car¬ 
rying out of his principles; it is under such principles 
that we constantly hear book-farming decried, that we 
hear science spoken of sneeringly and contemptuously, 
that every proposition involving a change is looked up¬ 
on, not as deserving investigation, but as a legitimate 
and natural object of suspicion. It is under the in¬ 
fluence of such principles that so much of the fairest and 
most fertile portion of our country has been worn out 
and exhausted by cultivation, and that so much more is 
deteriorating still from year to year. 
If a proposition for some appropriation to aid in the 
dissemination of knowledge, or the spread of scientific 
principles, among agriculturists, is brought forward in 
any of our legislatures, or other public bodies, it is, as 
a general rule, rejected or passed over, and often with 
contempt. Who, now, are the men that thus retard all 
progress and hang as a dead weight upon every effort? 
They are not lawyers, physicians or merchants; these 
are generally men of more enlarged views, who readily 
see the true bearings of such movements; they are in 
almost every case the unimproved farmers’. These are 
the men who have remained asleep while the rest of the 
world has been moving on, who have been selected by 
agricultural communities to express their will, and who 
as the exponents of that will crush .every forward move¬ 
ment. 
If a speaker addresses a popular assemblage, in sup¬ 
port of radical changes in the present system of ex¬ 
hausting culture, too generally pursued, it will not be 
the professional men who will dissent from his views, 
but the very men who would be benefitted by the change, 
and improved in their condition. Thus it is everywhere, 
the obstacles to improvement exist among the farmers 
themselves, and until they will move far more unitedly 
than they ever have done, its advance must still be slow. 
I have endeavored to show what a system of unim¬ 
proved farming would be if carried out in its fullest ex¬ 
tent, and it may serve to convince all, that books and 
study of some kind are necessary. Those who feel that 
the present position of agriculture is not what it should 
be, must unite in bringing about a change. If the works 
now existing are not sufficient, if the systems of instruc¬ 
tion proposed are not satisfactory, let the objectors exert 
themselves and produce better, but in the mean time, 
let all with one voice join to condemn the practice of the 
unimproved farmer, and to arouse him from his slum¬ 
bers. Yours truly, John P. Norton. 
Importation of French am! German Merino Sheep. 
Eds. Cultivator—George Campbell, Esq., of West- 
Westminster, Vt., in May last, returned from a tour 
through France, Germany, and Spain, bringing with him 
an importation of French Merino and German Merino 
sheep. William Chamberlain, Esq., of the firm of Cham¬ 
berlain & Phelps, New-York city, is associated with Mr. 
Campbell in this enterprise. Receiving a polite invitation 
from Mr. Campbell to visit him and examine his sheep,and 
to be present at their shearing, I embraced the same, 
and received much pleasure from my excursion. 
Mr. Campbell found no sheep in Spain which were, in 
his judgment, worth importing to this country. He says 
the flocks of sheep which formerly so highly distinguish¬ 
ed that country, have melted away and become sadly 
degenerated by bad management. After a thorough in¬ 
spection of the best flocks in the three countries, Mr. 
Campbell purchased about 100 sheep of Messrs. Gilbert 
and Cughnot, whose flocks are from the celebrated go¬ 
vernment flock of France, at Rambouillet, about 40 
miles from Paris. This flock is descended from the im¬ 
portation of Spanish Merinos made by the French go¬ 
vernment in the year 1786. In t{ The American Shep¬ 
herd,” I find the following extract from a report con¬ 
cerning this flock, by M. Gilbert. He says— 
“ The stock from which the flock of Rambouillet was 
derived, was composed of individuals beautiful beyond 
