240 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
FAILURE IN WHEAT CULTURE. 
BY PROF. EDWARD SEARING, MILTON COLLEGE. 
The value of an essay on “ Wheat Culture,” presented by 
one who never grew a stalk of wheat in his life, and whose 
entire practical experience in agriculture has been confined to 
the cultivation during three years of a garden of one or two 
acres, may appear to some very problematic. Yet it should 
be remembered that for the successful calculation of an eclipse 
neither is a personal visit to the sun and moon necessary, nor 
need a man have constructed with his own hands the telescope 
with which he scans the celestial spaces. Other men may have 
made his instruments and his tables, yet if his theoretical 
knowledge is not deficient, he, in the quiet of his study, works 
out the problem, the accuracy of whose results, to a minute of 
time, a future day verifies. 
So, possibly, in agriculture important problems can be solved 
by those not actually treading the furrow. Indeed, if the 
truth were known, it would be found that many of the best 
agricultural editors and writers of the country have done the 
larger part, if not the whole of their farming with the pen, 
rather than with the plow or hoe. 
Patience in examining and sifting the reports of other men’s 
labor, skill in classifying such reports, and wisdom in drawing 
therefrom conclusions of value to all—these are in agriculture, 
as in other departments of science and industry, qualities of 
the highest possible utility. Shall there be less honor to the 
man at the head of the weather bureau in Washington, who 
examines the multitudinous reports of local observers, and 
then publishes the history or prophecy of a storm, than to the 
observers themselves? 
