AMERICAN POCKET LIBRARY.
AGRICULTURE.
IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE.
“The task of working improvement on the earth is much more delightful than all the vainglory which can be acquired by ravaging it with the most uninterrupted career of conquests.”–Washington.
The great business of our country is agriculture. Because it feeds us, and furnishes the materials for our clothing; it gives employment to five-sixths of our population; it is the primary source of individual and national wealth; it is the nursing mother of manufactures and commerce; it is essential to national independence. Agriculture is worthy the most liberal patronage of our governments, state and national; it ought to be enlightened by a better (and thorough) education of the agricultural class. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, stand together; but they stand together like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the centre, and that largest is agriculture. We live in a country of small farms; a country, in which men cultivate with their own hands, their own fee-simple acres; drawing not only their subsistence, but also their spirit of independence, and manly freedom from the ground they plough. They are at once its owners, its cultivators, and its defenders. And whatever else may be undervalued, or overlooked, let us never forget, that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labour of man. Man, without the cultivation of the earth, is, in all countries, a savage. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. If there lives the man who may eat his bread with a conscience at peace, it is the man who has brought that bread out of the earth by his own honest industry. The profession of agriculture brings with it none of those agitating passions which are fatal to peace, or to the enjoyment even of the common blessings of life: it presents few temptations to vicious indulgence; it is favourable to health and to long life; to habits of industry and frugality; to temperance and self-government; to the cultivation of the domestic virtues; and to the calm and delicious enjoyments of domestic pleasures in all their purity and fulness!
Measures (a Substitute).–A box 24 inches by 16 in. square and 28 in. deep, will contain a barrel. A box 16 inches by 16 8-10 in. square, and 8 inches deep, will contain a bushel. A box 8 inches by 8 4-10 in. square, and 8 inches deep, will contain one peck. A box 4 inches by 4 in. square, and 4 2-10 inches deep, contain one quart.
IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURAL PAPERS.
A good agricultural paper, contributed to by practical and scientific farmers, will be of service in many points of view. It is a storehouse of agricultural knowledge, from which farmers may always draw something new and serviceable. For its contents are made up of the best opinions and best practices, and accurate experiments of the best farmers of the world combined.
The leading object, indeed, in the publication of an agricultural piper, is to afford to farmers a common medium through which to impart and receive instruction. Amongst the most intelligent farmers in the land are always found the best patrons of agricultural newspapers; where the land is in the highest state of cultivation, and where the domestic economy is all regulated in perfect order, you will invariably find agricultural newspapers, and intelligence to appreciate them: but they are seldom met with, where neglect and ignorance prevail! Some farmers may fail for want of sufficient capital, but more for want of sufficient knowledge. There is no class who place more entire reliance on their skill than farmers, yet no one who is acquainted with the general agriculture of the country, will assert that it has yet reached the perfection of which it is susceptible. The intent of cultivation is to obtain the greatest possible amount of produce from the soil; the farmer’s object being to raise it by such means as will afford him the largest profit with the least labour; and there can be no doubt, that the more scientifically he proceeds, the more effectually will both objects be gained.
There is not a subject which absolutely admits of a greater improvement than the cultivation of the soil: vast improvements are in progress, and will yet be made to an almost infinite extent; the slumbering energies of the farmer are awakening up, and agriculture, the broad foundation of a nation’s prosperity, is unmantling some of the brightest features of her hidden glory!
Encourage your Agricultural Papers.
Musty Grain is made sweet by putting it in boiling water, (double the quantify of grain), letting it cool in the water, and then dry it well. Skim the water.
A single Weed may draw out the nourishment that would have given fulness to half-a-dozen ears. To be free from taxes, is far less important than to be free from weeds.
