A cheerful spirit makes labor light and sleep sweet, and all around happy, which is much better than being rich. Study, then, to be cheerful and contented with thy lot; DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK. Heaven speed the plough! Fair Nature's shuttle true! Proofs of her power, while rots the warrior's shield. THE title of this book is designed to denote its general, rather than its specific character. An inference is not, therefore, to be drawn from it, that directions are given for the labor of each day in the year in chronological succession; or that particular portions of it are to be read in that order. This could not be done. Rules must always be general. There may and should be a formal scheme or programme of labor in the culture of a farm. For this there may be prescribed rules, no matter how comprehensive. Yet, the development of this programme and the application of these rules, in certain respects, must be adapted to varying circumstances. For instance, the wellinstructed farmer may calculate to accomplish some specified object on a particular day, but that day may be stormy, so that he must delay the labor till fair weather. He may be suddenly affected with bodily indisposition. Hence, he must wait till the return of good health. He may, too, calculate to accomplish a succession of specified operations in a particular week; but the season may be a week earlier or a week later than anticipated, so that he will find it expedient to vary the time for these operations. Hence, the reader is to expect in this work such an abstract of the philosophy of agriculture, analytically arranged, as will answer for the entire year, or for every day in year; to be read, and studied, and applied, in accordance with the varying circumstances which may be presented in successive years. the Again, this work is not designed to give everything, or even a moiety of the science applicable to agriculture, or of its practical details. This would require volumes in folio, instead of a single one of humble dimensions. A complete system of agricultural knowledge, got up in a style and form consonant to If you would be happy when old, be temperate while young. for this will be to thee a source of perpetual enjoyment, never reached by adversity. All labor is honorable. The Great First Cause works, Nature works, and every man who enjoys her fruits ought to hold it honorable to work. When shall the glorious time dawn that intelligence viii DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK. prevailing taste, would involve an expense inconvenient, if not incompatible with the pecuniary means of the mass of agriculturists. Nor would they have sufficient leisure at their control to peruse and study it. And it would embrace an elaboration of scientific technicality and of practical delineation, to which their mental culture has not been adapted. The education of farmers, generally, has been limited, and is consequently defective; only sufficient to meet the prominent exigences of persons in that sphere of society. Of course, voluminous treatises on chemical, mechanical, and physiological agriculture, filled with scientific terms and extended practical operations, would not be suited to the taste and the apprehension of individuals who have received the elements only of a common edu cation. Accordingly, this work is designed to embrace the popular elements of agriculture generally, so condensed as to be within the reach of persons possessing only limited pecuniary means; so perspicuous as to be understood and applied by individuals of the most common education; and, especially, so analyzed and arranged, that an examination of its several parts may be made in the short intervals of leisure under the control of every farmer, without intrusion upon his hours appropriated to ordinary manual labor. If he wish to find in an agricultural book a few facts only, that may be contained in ten lines, how repulsive it would be to him, if he had to read over a dozen pages before he found what he wanted! To wit: suppose he were upon the point of planting his Indian corn, and wanted instructions as to the best mode of preparing the seed-to produce speedy and vigorous germs, and to prevent the depredations of mischievous birds-how inconvenient, to say the least, it would be to him, if he had to ransack a whole chapter on the history and the constituent attributes of the article, before he found what he then desired! Long chapters of science or literature in a book are like long roads without guide-boards or milestones: they bewilder the eye; they prevent quick and clear perception; and the sojourner in either is often perplexed in ascertaining where he is. The author, therefore, in this work, endeavors not only to divest its pages of whatever would be avoided by the class of persons for whom it is especially designed, but to place each article and each fact in a position to catch a glance of the eye with the rapidity of thought, or the motion of the printer's hand in setting type. And, instead of encumbering the volume with matter to which, perhaps, ninetenths of these persons are indisposed, from habit or necessity, he aims to collect a variety of facts, not ordinarily found in a A good word for a bad one is worth much, and costs little. and true philanthropy shall annihilate the selfish distinction which pride has made between labor and idleness? We see not, in this life, the end of human actions—their influence never dies, In every widening circle, it reaches beyond the grave. It lives when their author is dead, DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK. ix book on agriculture or domestic economy, and scattered, usually, throughout whole volumes appropriated to that department of literature. Thus a material reduction of expense is effected, in addition to the convenience of having the whole in a single one instead of a multiplication of volumes. It is not presumed that everything in this volume will be alike useful to each individual who may purchase it. That would be an extravagant expectation. A single article or class of articles may be found appropriate to the occupation of one class of readers, while other portions of the work will be equally appropriate and serviceable to those respectively making inquiries on other subjects. The following illustration is suggested. Directions for the culture of strawberries might be of no use to persons not engaged in it; or for the culture of bees to those who do not keep them; or for the making of cheese to those who do not keep cows; or for the reclaiming and fructifying waste lands to those who have none of the kind to be cultivated. Each will be interested and benefited in finding what relates to his own occupation or interests, while all will have also a vast amount of facts, and hints, and directions, beneficial to the general interests of society. No family should be without a book of the character of the one here presented to the public. It would be most extraordinary, if the cost of it were not saved many times over to the possessor of it. Suppose the farmer should find in it a description for making or preserving manures, more valuable than his own previous knowledge; suppose the gardener should be led, by the use of it, to some new fertilizing agent or an effectual antidote for bugs or insects, so destructive to vines and fruits; suppose the keeper of poultry should discover some new hint for the better production of eggs and chicks; suppose the housewife should find a receipt for making bread, or cake, or pudding, better than she had before made; or suppose the groom should find directions for the better training of a horse, or the preservation of the leather of the harness and carriage; how much would the community be benefited by such counsels? A hundred similar suppositions might be made in the various departments of domestic and rural economy, and all tending to the same result. What farmer has not spent weeks of labor, year after year, without profit, because he did not know all the best modes of applying it? What fruit culturist does not annually fail of results, on the same account, more than equal to the cost of a dozen copies of this book? What housekeeper does not now and then lose a piece of fresh meat, or a basket of eggs, or a pot of butter; or oblige her husband to eat a poor The best snuff in the world is a snuff of the morning air. reaching, in all coming time, for good or for evil, the destinies of generations now unborn. Afflictions, sent upon man by a wise and beneficent Providence, are the same to the soul as the plough X to the fallow ground, the pruning-knife to the vine, and the furnace DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK. dinner instead of a good one, against which she would be guarded by the use of the Receipts with which she is here presented? If It is well known that many object to book-farming-bookgardening-book housekeeping-and book-stock-rearing. the objection were good, there should be no books in school; there should be no printed treatises on Navigation-or Mechanics-or Medicine-or Law. Then each youth would limit his school attainments by the dimensions of his own pedagogue's pericranium; each mariner would be able to consult the stars only, and not Bowditch's Tables; the mechanic would have no resource but his own brains; the physician none but his saddle-bags; and the lawyer none but his empty green satche!. Now, this is all nonsense! What are books? They are, or they should be, the presentation, in a lucid form, of the wisdom of experience of practical men under different circumstances. For instance, law-books consist of abstract principles, modified and explained in their application to the business of society. Medical books give a detail of the most successful modes of treating disease. And equally so are agricultural books-they are the practical results of experiments in culti vating the ground, by the most intelligent and successful farmers. So that, in reality, when an author gives a book like the present to the public, the reader is expected to find-not theories, simply-not vagaries of the imagination-not the abstractions of metaphysicians-not the moonshine of love-sick poets; but plain matters of fact-what one person has done, and what another person has done;-how one farmer makes his cows yield milk and butter every year, equal to the sum paid for them, in addition to the cost of their feed; how another causes his swine to earn their living in the production of manure; how another converts worthless land into productive soils; how another gets a hundred bushels of corn and forty bushels of wheat from the acre;-and how another causes his meadows to produce him an income equal to the interest of five hundred dollars per acre. Or, if you please, how the gardener or the horticulturist will support his family, and become thrifty and independent, by the cultivation of land in extent only sufficient to pasture one cow. Or, in fine, how the good housewife, with small means, can enable her household to have as good breakfasts, as good dinners, and as good suppers, as can be had for two dollars per day at the best hotels. No one can deny that one farmer will work hard, and be miserably poor all his life. His hogs will be only half fed, and never attain their proper dimensions. His cows will be poor, The more business a man has to do, the more he can accomplish. to the gold-destroying its evil passions, and making it productive in virtuous affections. The Farmer.—There is abundant exercise for his hands, his head, and his heart; and the great variety of living objects under his care must render his labor the most satisfactory. DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK. xi and not yield half milk enough to pay even for their scanty feed. His garden will be ruined by his fowls, and overgrown with weeds. His fences will be in ruins. All his crops will be meagre, and not half equal in value to pay for the labor bestowed on them. In addition to all this, his family are poorly clad-is without money, and in debt for whatever he purchases. While another one, close by him, is prosperous in all he does. His crops are good. His fences are in prime order. His garden abounds with the best esculents for the table. His hogs are fat. His cattle and horses are plump and sleek. His granary and larder give evidence of abundance. Besides, he is in debt to no one beyond his ability to pay, and always has at command cash for all needful purposes: Such exhibitions are about us in every direction. Why is there such a difference? Both of these persons had similar local and physical advantages. Neither had obstacles beyond the other to overcome. Why, then, in the process of a few years, have such different results been wrought out? Evidently, because the latter understood his business, and the former did not. No other reason can be assigned. Nor The aim of the author is not to supersede the works already before the public. Many of them are excellent. Where there is one of them in use, he wishes there were a hundred. is it his design to compete with them in the extent of the investigations with which they are characterized. Some of them are exclusively on the chemical nature of soils; some on fertilizing agents; and others on the physiology of vegetable nature. These are all exceedingly necessary in advancing the ends for which they are designed. As Text-Books in our Academies and Colleges they are indispensable. To men of education generally, likewise, they are of great importance. But to young personsor others who have not had the intellectual culture previously requisite, they are uninteresting and comparatively of little value. Before one can read a book on History or Political Economy, he must learn the names of the alphabet, and the rules for their combination into words and sentences. Before he can understand the canons of Rhetoric and Criticism, he must learn the principles of Grammar. And before he can fathom the higher regions of Mathematics, he must study common Arithmetic. So likewise it is in agricultural science. The simple elements are first to be presented to the attention. When these are understood, preparation has been made for higher grades of improvement. It is the design of the author to furnish this elementary instruction; to remove popular prejudices and errors prevailing on the subject; and to place agriculture Drinking water neither makes a man sick, nor in debt, nor his wife a widow. In a word, agriculture tends harmoniously to develop the whole man, physically, intellectually, and morally. |