o 
 

 
hat the lister Ms it each as to * arming, 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 i THK 
 
 NDIAXA STATK ACIMCI III I! Al. SlM'IKTY 
 
 AT ITS ANNUAL IA1K. I..\1AH:TTE. INDIANA 
 
 FTORACE GRE&LE1 
 
 NEW YOEK: 
 FOWLERS AND WELLS, PUB LISH T -\ US , 
 
 <'I.INTO\ HALL. 131 NASSAT STKKK.T. 
 
 lii Wathin 
 
 PhiUdelphU: 231 Arch St. 
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 i London: 1-Ji SlranJ. 
 
ADDKESS. 
 
 FARMERS AND FRIENDU : I stand before you at your Society's 
 invitation, feeling the full force of the criticism which denies to 
 one of my habits and pursuits capacity to instruct fanners as to 
 their own espe.-ial vocation. "Shoemaker, stick to your last!" 
 is a sound though sometime^ misapplied admonition, and there is 
 givut >tivngth in tlu- natural presumption that every man can see 
 a little farther on his own proper pathway than can be seen by 
 an\ one else. I fully rcali/.e and cheerfully admit that any one 
 of you, who has devoted tin- la>t twenty or thirty years to Agri- 
 culture, must kno\\ very much more concerning it than I, who- 
 abandoned it at fifteen to master and pursue a imt exacting 
 mechanical and intellectual vocation, and have since been able to. 
 snatch hut here and there an hour from a constant pressure of 
 imperative duties and oppressive cares to revive the memories of 
 my youth among the busy seed-planters, or within sound of the 
 mown- sharpening his scythe. If I were to essay a lecture on 
 the Complete Husbandman to fix the proper time for planting 
 this or that vegetable, and for harvesting thisor that grain, and so on 
 I might, of course, be corrected, on many points, by some of the 
 youngest of my auditors. Little as I know of farming, I know too- 
 much of it to attempt any such teaching. What I shall endeavor, is 
 to set forth some of the principles which underlie the whole fabric 
 of Productive Art and Industry, (my calling as well as yours,) 
 and to show their application, as correctly as I may, to the Farm- 
 er's vocation as well as others. I may err in this or that ap- 
 plication ; but I shall endeavor to base my inculcations on prin- 
 
 (8) 
 
4 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 ciples so broad in their scope, and so vindicated by centuries of 
 successful experience in a great variety of pursuits, as to be justly 
 entitled to a place among the axioms of Industrial Science. 
 
 I. The first point, then, which I shall endeavor to illustrate, is 
 that of Economy of Means perhaps I should rather say, Har- 
 mony of Proportion in the management of farms as of every 
 ; riling el^e./ ; for *y fieri I say Economy, I mean something as re- 
 *frTote as possible fWrn Parsimony. Cheap lands, cheap buildings, 
 .*. I I *iaj).}al9Oj- chgap.stfodk, cheap trees or grafts, are as far from 
 .''.I "ec<5ix>Vy *asanytllm^well could be. By Economy of Means, I 
 imply such a disposition or distribution of means, be they scanty 
 or abundant, as shall insure to the operator the largest attainable 
 return for his labor and skill. For example : I print newspapers 
 for a living, and am obliged, by the extent of some of my edi- 
 tions, to use presses costing twelve to sixteen thousand dollars 
 each. There is a real economy in so doing, because I could not 
 otherwise dispatch my papers to their subscribers in acceptable 
 season. But if any journal printing one-third or one-tenth so 
 many copies, were to buy and use such presses, the policy would 
 be wasteful and ruinous, although the editions would be thrown 
 off with unwonted celerity and efficiency. The interest on the 
 capital needlessly locked up in presses would probably absorb 
 all the profits of the business, if not more. And yet this is the 
 identical blunder that thousands of farmers persist in, by holding 
 on to large farms, which cost thousands of dollars, and are very 
 likely mortgaged or otherwise encumbered, while able or willing 
 -only to apply thereto the labor, science, skill and manures which 
 are requisite and proper for farms one-fourth so large. Here is 
 enormous waste a loss of interest on three-fourths of the capi- 
 tal invested in land a loss which may possibly be endured in 
 farming, but which could not fail to prove ruinous in almost any 
 other business. 
 
 Every farmer seems aware of the reality and magnitude of 
 the general error in this respect, yet the great majority persist in 
 being wise for their neighbors only, and not for themselves. 
 .And I apprehend the error with many originates rather in want 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 5 
 
 of thought than lack of knowledge. They plod on in the path 
 beaten out by their grandfathers, not reflecting that a course which 
 might have been advisable, or at least excusable, when a farm of 
 three, hundred acres was worth but a thousand dollars in cash, 
 has Ijecn rendered utterly indefensible and suicidal by a gradual 
 advance in the value of that farm to five or perhaps ten thousand 
 dollars. He who can buy land at ton shillings per acre may afford 
 to leave it. unfilled and unfenced for years, until its timber or its 
 urass shall have become decidedly valuable ; but when that tim- 
 ber shall have disappeared, the grass become the watched-for 
 prey of droves of other men's cattle, and the land worth fifty 
 dollars per acre, it is flagrant ainl culpable waste to blunder on 
 as though it were still worth but ten shillings. 
 
 I once went to look at a farm <>f fifty acres that I thought of 
 buying for a summer home, some tl-rty miles from the City of 
 New York. The owner had boon born on it, as I believe had his 
 father before him; but it yielded only a moagor subsistence for 
 l:is family, and he thought f srlling and going West. I went over 
 it with him late in June, passing through a well-filled barn-yard 
 which had not been disturbed that season, and stepping thence 
 into a corn-field of five acres with a like field of potatoes just 
 beyond it. " Why, neighbor !" asked I, in astonishment, " how 
 could you leave all this manure so handy to your plowed land, 
 and plant ten acres without any ?" " O, I was sick a good part 
 <f the Spring, and so hurried that I could not find time to haul it 
 out." " Why, suppose you had planted but five acres in all, and 
 emptied your barn-yard on those five, leaving the residue un- 
 touched, don't you think you would have harvested a larger crop f 
 " Well, perhaps I should," was the poor farmer's response. It 
 seemed never before to have occurred to him that he could let 
 alone a part of his land. Had he progressed so far, he might 
 have ventured thence to the conclusion that it is less expensive 
 and more profitable to raise a full crop on five acres than half a 
 crop on ten. I am sorry to say we have a good many such farm 
 ill left at the East, though the advanced prices of land 
 and the impoverished condition of the soils they inherited, with 
 their slovenly modes of cultivation, have driven the greater share 
 
6 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 of them to the West. Here, on your deep, virgin soils, they 
 renew their round of exercises in false husbandry, wasting their 
 manures because " this land is rich enough," and exhausting their 
 soils by one grain-crop after another, until they run down their 
 capacity from thirty bushels per acre of Wheat to ten of Corn or 
 five of Rye, when they will be off again for Iowa, Missouri or 
 Oregon. When they shall have got so far West as to find land 
 that doesn't need nor reward fertilizing, and will not be worn 
 out by their mode of farming, I trust they will come to a full 
 stop and send for all their relations. 
 
 Let me be rightly understood : I do not condemn a man for 
 owning more land, in a new country, where land is cheap, than 
 he is now able or willing to cultivate. I know perfectly well that 
 the system of thorough culture that succeeds so admirably in 
 Belgium is not yet adapted to Indiana. Where good fenced pas- 
 ture may be bought for eight or ten dollars per acre, you cannot 
 afford to keep up your cattle and cut all their food, though that 
 is excellent policy in its place. It insures the keeping of a much 
 larger stock on a given area, beside enriching the land far more 
 rapidly. But it requires vastly more labor, and where a week's 
 work is worth an acre of arable land, it won't pay. What I in- 
 sist on is simply this : Land worth cultivating AT ALL is worth 
 cultivating WELL. Almost half the soil in my section never ought 
 to feel the touch of plow-iron, unless for the purpose of striking 
 fire on some of its abundant rocks. Such land should be kept 
 covered from too particular observation by growth after growth 
 of wood, giving variety and freshness to the landscape, and per- 
 sistence, if not stability, to the streams. But wherever an acre 
 is broken up. it should be with a fixed resolve to extract a good 
 crop from it, and to use all the means requisite to that end. A 
 field of spindling yellow corn, or stunted, straggling oats, or blos- 
 soming buckwheat that seems to have been compassionately sown 
 tor the accommodation of broken-winged bumble-bees, is a pal- 
 pable impeachment of the capacity of its owner to manage land 
 at all. If it can do no better than this, he ought never to have 
 broken it up. If he will do such a stupid thing, he ought at least 
 to keep his folly out of sight from the public highway. 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 7 
 
 I presume careful investigation would discover the existence of 
 a pretty general Law of Proportion between the market value of 
 a farm and the amount of labor that should be annually devoted 
 to its cultivation, apart from enduring improvements. Let us 
 suppose a farm of one hundred acres to be worth, this year, $10 
 per acre, or $1,000 in all ; then we will say one man's labor, or 
 three hundred days' work per year, worth $300 in all, might be as 
 much as could be profitably bestowed on its mere cultivation, 
 But roads and markets improve, until this land is worth $30 an 
 acre, or the farm $3,000 ; and now much more of it may li- taken 
 out of forest or pasture, and devoted to grain and vegetables, 
 involving an increase of the labor expended on it to three men's 
 steady work, or $900 per year. So, as the value increased to 
 $50, $75, and at length $100 per acre, the labor employed 
 thereon should be correspondingly increased, whether by a divi- 
 sion of the farm or otherwise. I do not profess to indicate the 
 precise proportion of present labor to Valuation of fixed Capital, 
 but only that there is such a proportion, and that Economic 
 Science will yet ascertain and declare it. 
 
 It is not necessary that land should be cultivated in order to be 
 productive. The young, growing wood is earning money for its 
 owner, as well as the corn-field. He who has land that he does 
 not need, yet wishes to keep for his children, can hardly serve 
 them better than by inclosing it effectually, planting it with locust, 
 hickory, and other choice timber, ami leaving it undisturbed till 
 his sons may require it. But, even left in open, naked common, 
 land generally tends to improve from the renovating influences' 
 of the atmosphere alone, as the reclaimed "old- fields" of the 
 South bear witness. It is only poorly farmed land that is a blight 
 to its possessor, and a discredit to the country. If all the labor 
 now devoted to farming, throughout the Union, were wisely con- 
 centrated on one-half the land, our annual product would be much 
 larger, our lands would appear far more productive and valuable, 
 while the timber that we are now wasting and destroying, as 
 though Prophet Miller's speedy conflagration of the world were a 
 demonstrated verity, would be gradually re-investing the earth 
 with a beauty and graceful majesty which Cabot or John Smith 
 
8 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 may have realized, but of which our children seem destined to 
 have none but hearsay evidence. 
 
 I hold that Farmers may also learn of Mechanics and Artifi- 
 cers to estimate more highly and justly than most of them now 
 do the importance and necessity of SCIENCE, or a profound and 
 accurate knowledge of principles, to the efficient and profitable 
 prosecution of their labors. The worker in Iron, for example, 
 recognizes his need to know what is the nature and what are the 
 properties of Iron ; and not merely of Iron in general, but of the 
 various qualities and kinds. Without this, he may blow or strike 
 fairly in a blacksmith's shop, and may have learned to make a 
 tolerable horse-shoe; but he has not risen to the rank of an 
 artisan. Let him acquire a thorough knowledge of Iron in the 
 abstract, and of the laws of chemical affinity which govern its 
 combinations with other substances, and the practical knowledge 
 he has gained in making horse-shoes may be made available in 
 forging anchors, in making plows, or in a thousand other employ- 
 ments which, in the absence of Science, he must have approached 
 as a novice, and learned from the beginning. Science is the 
 bridge across which our practical knowledge, gained by experi- 
 ence, passes and repasses, to aid us at need in our stern battle 
 with physical obstruction and stubbornness. He who knows how 
 to do one thing well, and does it, is a good workman, so far as 
 that special function is regarded ; but he who is thoroughly 
 grounded in the Science which underlies his vocation is enabled 
 to master a dozen different arts or modifications of his pursuit 
 with a celerity and perfection otherwise unattainable. 
 
 Now the farmer, who perfectly comprehends the value of 
 Science in the construction of a bridge or a chimney, often seems 
 not to appreciate so vividly its importance in his own vocation. 
 His unexpressed but acted-on idea would seem to be that, wliiU- 
 other industrial callings require instruction, method, abstract 
 knowledge, Farming is a matter of instinct, or mechanical imita- 
 tion. He seems to think a knowledge of its principles and laws 
 " comes by Nature," as Dogberry supposed reading and writing 
 did. He sends to college the son who is to be fitted for a profes- 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 9 
 
 sion, and to the Academy he who is to be qualified for a peda- 
 gogue, but he does not consider that one who is to have the farm 
 on condition of taking care of the old folks, needs any other 
 training for his life-long pursuit than that which is begun in the 
 District School and finished behind the plow. 
 
 And yet there is not a good reason in the world for inducting 
 a youth, who is to become a master-worker in iron, copper or 
 lead, into a thorough knowledge of the material he is to fashion 
 for a livelihood, which is not at least as good a reason forinstnut- 
 ing the young farmer thoroughly and scientifically in the natuiv 
 and diverse properties of soils. These are more various, more 
 complex, less obvious, than those of any single metal. A good soil 
 is always a compound, and the more various its materials the 
 greater (probably) its value. A pure yellow sand or blue clay 
 is easily comprehended and estimated ; while one deep, black 
 loam may, because of certain latent elements, be worth twin- as 
 much as another euually promising to the casual observer. No 
 man who has not scrutinized its husbandry and productions for 
 \ ear after year is qualified to fix the value of a farm, any more 
 than to cultivate it. without the ability to chemically analyze and 
 accurately determine tin- composition of its soil. 
 
 But this, which I am commending, is sneered at as .floo^-farming, 
 and sturdy old codgers who have sped the plow all their days, 
 laugh till they almost fancy themselves witty at the idea of a man 
 coming out of a college-chamber or a chemical laboratory to 
 teach them how to grow corn or rear cattle. And truly, if the 
 teacher were to commend his science as a substitute for their prac- 
 tical knowledge as rendering experience unmeaning and personal 
 observation superfluous there would be ample provocation for 
 sharper shafts of wit than these will ever be able to speed. But 
 this no man has ever suggested or commended. The farm- 
 er best schooled in the nature and properties of soils, the 
 laws which govern vegetation and the elements essential to form 
 thrifty plants or animals, will learn from experience not less but 
 more than his uninstructed neighbor. His observations will 
 have a wider significance ; and the fact newly observed to-day 
 will be readily assigned to its proper place, where it will 
 
10 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 light on other facts observed yesterday or to be observed to-mor- 
 row. Not to supersede experience, but to elevate it to a stand- 
 point whence its range of vision will be broader, and its deduc- 
 tions more reliable, do we plead for Science in Farming. 
 
 What is in effect contended for by the advocates of Book-farm- 
 ing is simply this that a farmer, like any artisan, while he needs 
 practical experience, may also profit by the practical experience of 
 others. For example : A new plant or vegetable is introduced, 
 which our anti-book farmer concludes to try, though totally igno- 
 rant of its nature and season. Let us suppose the nearest neigh- 
 bor who has ever grown this plant lives five miles away. Now, 
 will not this new experimenter, if he have a decent share of com- 
 mon sense, ride over and ask the experienced cultivator what 
 soil is best adapted to this plant ; what manures are best for it, 
 what time it should be planted or sowed, how cultivated, &c., &c. ? 
 Plainly, it would be sheer madness for him to omit such inqui- 
 ries, and go on as if there had been no preceding experience, to 
 answer all these questions and determine all these points for him- 
 self, by hap-hazard planting on every variety of soil, at every 
 possible season, with any or every sort of fertilizer ! By so doing 
 he must spend several hundred dollars to determine what he 
 might readily have ascertained at the cost of a dollar. Well ; if 
 he could turn to the proper page of an Agricultural Dictionary or 
 Encyclopedia, and there learn exactly when this new plant should 
 be sown in this latitude, how manured, how cultivated, &c., would 
 not that be still easier and cheaper than to ride over to his dis- 
 tant neighbor's ? Would it not be highly probable that the 
 directions contained in the book, being founded on a wide range 
 of experiments, would be more reliable and complete than his 
 neighbor's counsel, based on his narrow personal experience 1 A 
 prudent man would probably consult both book and neighbor, and 
 then follow either only so far as his own judgment should dictate ; 
 but how can any one approve his taking counsel of one man's 
 experience, yet condemn a course which is, in fact, but paying 
 deference to the experience of many thousands ? 
 
 II. But some say, " Consult and profit by all the experience 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 11 
 
 within your reach, but don't talk to us about Agricultural Science. 
 Growing good crops is the Farmer's vocation, and in this pursuit 
 experience is always a safe guide ; not so what is called Science, 
 which often misleads and impoverishes." 
 
 Let us consider : 
 
 Of course, there is much Science so-called, which is false Sci- 
 ence the brain-spun speculations and subtleties of idle and fan- 
 ciful people, anxious to account for phenomena which they do not 
 
 really understand. No one considers such Science worth any- 
 thing; and it is one of the chief recommendations of true 
 Science that it enables men to detect the pretender and unmask 
 him. But Science implies a knowledge >f Nature and her immu- 
 table Laws; and who can seriously doubt the importance of this 
 to the Farmer? For instan- 
 
 We all know that a field of one hundred acres entirely devoted 
 during five successive years to a rotation of Corn, Oats, Clover, 
 Potatoes and Wheat respectively. \vuill yield a far greater product 
 than would that same field if divided into live emial parts and 
 each devoted to some one of the-e products for live years in suc- 
 cession. Experience had settled thi-<. before Science was allowed 
 to say anything about it. When at last interrogated, for tin- rear 
 son or law which underlies this fa<-t, Science made answer that 
 each plant requires and e\a-t> its peculiar nutriment, and that 
 this is relatively if not absolutely e\hau>ted by growing that crop 
 on the same land year after year. It m;.y !> that the five plants 
 above named all require Lime, Potash, Phosphorus, Ammo- 
 nia, Carbon, &e., which, beside Water, are the chief elements of 
 vegetable structure ; but, if so, they require them in very un- 
 equal proportions or quantities. Grown each on its own twenty 
 acres throughout the five years, one will have exhausted the 
 Lime, yet have an abundance of Phosphorus left ; another will 
 have absorbed all the Potash in its division, yet hardly tasted the 
 Lime ; and so on ; while, had the hundred acres been sown in rota- 
 tion or succession entirely to one and then to another of these 
 crops, or had the five been alternated from portion to portio* 
 
12 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 with each succeeding year, they would all have yielded abundant- 
 ly, yet left no portion of the soil utterly robbed of any single 
 element. Experience affirms that the rotation of crops has taken 
 far more from the soil than the adverse system, which Science 
 unhesitatingly corroborates, and adds that, while rotation has 
 taken more from the soil, it has nevertheless left it in better con- 
 dition to bear future harvests ; and this Experience will in due 
 time ratify and establish. 
 
 Here, then, Experience has been outstripped by Science, whose 
 torch irradiates the Futqre with light drawn directly from the 
 Present, not reflected from the Past. Experience has shown that 
 a particular rotation is preferable to the growth of the same 
 plant on the same soil for a succession of years ; but Science fore- 
 casts beyond this, and affirms that any possible rotation must be 
 preferable to incessant and unchanging repetition, for reasons 
 which lie deep in the bosom of Nature and are inseparable from 
 her very vitality. As surely as Experience has demonstrated the 
 expediency of keeping cattle where they have grass and water 
 both, instead of shutting up a part where they will have grass enough 
 but no water, and the residue where they will have abundance 
 of water but no grass or other food, so clearly does Science dem- 
 onstrate the advantage of growing different crops in rotation. 
 
 But in answering our first question, " Why should different 
 crops be grown in rotation ?" Science has thrown open a wide 
 field of profitable inquiry. We have seen that five good crops 
 of Indian Corn cannot be grown off the same ground for five suc- 
 cessive years, unless by virtue of profuse and expensive manur- 
 ing; because each crop has absorbed an undue proportion of cer- 
 tain elements or properties essential to Corn, leaving others, less 
 vital to Maize, but more necessary to Wheat, Clover, &c., undis- 
 turbed in the soil. We now know, therefore, that any average 
 soil, regarded with reference to any particular plant, possesses 
 certain elements in excess, while it is deficient in others ; and we 
 demand of Science that she tell us just how we may most cheaply 
 and easily supply, not elements of fertility in general, but those 
 particular elements which are deficient, considered with reference 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 13 
 
 to our purpose. We desire not to spend our time and means in 
 filling a soil on which Wheat is never to be grown with costly 
 elements which Wheat alone will require or take up, but to invest 
 each dollar and day, so far as we may, in enriching that soil with 
 the elements wherein it is now deficient, but which our next crop 
 will nevertheless require. In other words, since it is not our 
 practice to plow, plant and cultivate our entire farms forests, 
 ravines and all because we purpose to harvest Indian Corn ami 
 Wheat from a small part of them, so we desire to exercise a like 
 discrimination and practice a like economy in the production or 
 purchase and application of manures. And to do this, we appeal 
 to Science for an analysis of the diil'-rent soils of our various 
 fields, to determine wherein each i- .1. -ticicnt, each relatively re- 
 dundant, that we may apply various tertili/ers accordingly. And 
 this is the basis, and all the basis, of Scientific Farming. 
 
 Let me linger still on this topic of Book-farming, and pile il- 
 lustration on illustration of its true character and manifold advan- 
 Yoii may tell me that this U needless, Imt I know better ; 
 since 1 know there arc tens >f thousands of termers in every 
 quarter nay, right here in Indiana some of them. I doubt not, 
 now before me who take no agricultural paper nay, no paper 
 at all ! because they think they raw'/ afford it! that it has no 
 other than a speculative or fancy value for their use that they 
 would be the poorer for taking it ! Now I maintain that no farmer 
 or artisan that can read can really afford to do without at least 
 three weekly newspapers ; one to bring him the general news, 
 politics and social movements of his time ; aunt her to teach him 
 whatever of discovery, invention or improvement may from time 
 to time be made in his own pursuit or calling ; and the third to 
 keep him advised of whatever of interest may transpire in his 
 own locality or county. He may be so very poor and inefficient 
 that he is justified in obtaining two of these by exchanges with 
 his equally luckless neighbors ; but these three he should at least 
 read every week, because ho cannot afford to be without the in- 
 telligence they bring him. And, while there are thousands who 
 are bringing up sons for farmers and daughters for housewives 
 without taking a periodical or even owning a book that treats of 
 
14 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 Farming or Housewifery, it is absurd to say that this stupid pre- 
 judice against Book-farming has been already sufficiently dealt 
 with, since it is this day so potent and mischievous. Bear with 
 me, then, while I attempt to let in some daylight upon it through 
 the relation of a few homely facts : 
 
 I was visiting some old friends in Vermont last summer, when 
 I observed in the garden of one of them the most thrifty and 
 luxuriant grape-vine that I had ever seen growing in so cold a cli- 
 mate. Now it is one advantage possessed by the class of ig- 
 norant cultivators to which I belong over that sort who not merely 
 know nothing but glory in it, that we are not at all reluctant to 
 confess our ignorance when we see a chance of thus mitigating it. 
 I, therefore, at once asked the lady whose vine this was, to tell 
 me by what means she had insured it such vigor and productive- 
 ness ; and she replied that she had made it her rule, ever since 
 the vine was set there, to throw a pailfull of soap-suds at its root 
 at the close of every washing-day. Again : in the same garden I 
 remarked a scar or ring around each plum-tree, just above the 
 ground, and, on inquiry, ascertained that these trees had been 
 girdled last spring by some malicious scoundrel, who had halted 
 one dark night, on his way from the gutter to the State prison, to 
 perpetrate this dastardly outrage. The owner discovered the 
 mischief early next morning, and, having a pot of copal var- 
 nish in the house, speedily applied it with a brush . to the wound 
 on each tree, covering each with a coat of varnish ; and by this 
 means every tree was saved. When I saw them in midsummer, 
 they were as green and thrifty as any trees within miles. Now 
 I do not stand here to maintain that soap-suds will always insure 
 an abundance of fine grapes, nor that a coating of varnish, sea- 
 sonably applied, will always save girdled trees ; for I do not 
 know such to be the fact. I trust further experience and inquiry 
 will cast light on both points that soap-suds will be withheld 
 from the door-yard and given to the grape-vines ; and that every 
 tree that any prowling rascal may girdle will be promptly coated 
 with varnish until we shall determine under what circumstances, 
 and with what limitations, potash or soda is beneficial to grapes 
 and varnish an antidote for girdling. The point I make is this, 
 
TEACH AS TO FAKMING. 15 
 
 that no sane former, having heard this relation, will henceforth 
 throw away his soap-suds or neglect varnishing his girdled trees, 
 unless he learns some reason for doing otherwise ; and that, if 
 he would do so on the strength of my mere narration, he ought 
 many times rather to do so had he found these same recipes in 
 an Agricultural paper or manual, where the chances are ten to 
 one that it would not have found a place unless on the strength 
 of testimony more reliable than mine, because founded on a wider 
 and more varied experience, and subjected to a more rigid scru- 
 tiny. 
 
 Take another case : My friend Dr. R. T. Underhill was a 
 physician in extensive practice some twenty years ago, when in 
 the prime of life, having bermr heartily tired of gallipots and 
 bone-sawing, he shook off the dust of our city from his feet, and 
 resolved henceforth to live an hom-st lite as a grower of fruits. 
 He went forty miles up the Hudson, bought a neck of land, and 
 commenced the cultivation of the Grape, which he has since pro- 
 secuted with scientific knowledge, untii-iiii; energy, and at length 
 with decided success, He ha< probably assuaged more sutK'rinij 
 with his Crapes than h- '<-<\ by his drugs; he has grown 
 
 considerably younger by hi* t\v-iit\ years' fanning, and is now 
 taking his place among the most brisk and genial of our youth 
 an admirable specimen of that branch of " Young America " which 
 does not hate to work nor long for opportunity to steal. 
 
 Well : the Doctor, since the untimely death of the lamented 
 Downing, stands, probably, at the head of our fruit-growers, with 
 whom one knotty problem of tin- la>t few years has been 
 how to counteract the ravages of the Curculio, which is nearly 
 robbing us of plums, for which his taste is equal to ours, while in 
 the matter of gratifying it he is <l'-ei.le<lly ahead of us. By the 
 time he has taken his quota, the plums left on a tree, or score of 
 trees, are not worth gathering. But Dr. Underhill, by long study 
 and careful observation, has discovered the means of completely 
 outwitting him. He has found, by watching and noting her move- 
 ments, that the female Curculio will not deposit her eggs where 
 they, when the plums containing them drop, will fall into the 
 
16 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 water, her instinct teaching her that they will thus be drowned. 
 Taking advantage of this instinct, the Doctor plants his plum-trees 
 on the bank of a stream or pond, and gives the trunks such an 
 inclination that all their branches overhang the water. Thus the 
 desolater is checkmated by his own instinct, and the fruit pre- 
 served from his ravages. I know nothing cleverer in its way 
 than this device. 
 
 Now I suppose there is no contemner of ' Book-farming ' so 
 mulish or so dull that he would not, after hearing of this device, 
 take advantage of any brook or pond he might have on his 
 premises, and set his plum-trees where they will be safe from 
 the Curculio. But suppose the discovery had been made by some 
 fruit-grower of the last century, and duly recorded in a book ; 
 had since been subjected to a thousand ordeals, and had passed 
 triumphant through them all would it have been less acceptable 
 or less valuable than it now is 1 If it be worth our while to learn 
 at all, what difference can be imagined between the knowledge 
 founded on a neighbor's experience and that contained in a book? 
 If there be any, are not the odds altogether in favor of that pre- 
 scription which has undergone the wider scrutiny and been sub- 
 jected to the more rigorous criticism ? 
 
 And here let me speak of another, who more recently shook 
 off the dust of our City's pavements to spend the later half of his 
 life on a farm. I allude to Professor JAMES J. MAPES, whose 
 fame as an Agriculturist must have reached very many among 
 you. It cannot be many years it seems to me but five or six 
 since Professor Mapes, who was extensively engaged in Sugar- 
 Refining and had heavy dealings in Sugar came to a dead halt, 
 or rather a dead smash. Stripped of means and of credit, he felt 
 too old to launch again on the dangerous sea of Commerce, whose 
 waves had so lately and so deeply engulphed him ; so he hired a 
 bit of land in New Jersey, removed his family thither, and resolved 
 to turn the chemical and other scientific knowledge which had so 
 little availed him as a Sugar-Refiner, to account in the novel 
 vocation of a farmer. He was very destitute, and of course got 
 on but slowly at first ; and when he first undertook to lecture in 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 17 
 
 illustration of Farming as a Science, I well remember how very 
 general was the prejudice and derision he encountered. But he 
 persevered both in farming and lecturing ; and he has gloriously 
 succeeded. I presume there were many errors in his earlier in- 
 culcations ; there may be some yet, for he is a genius, and genius 
 is too apt to leap hastily to sweeping conclusions from inadequate 
 premises. But, whatever his faults, the root of the matter \vas in 
 him, and his career has proved it. As a Lecturer, an Editor, and 
 a- a Practical Farmer, he is enriching the vocation he has i-hosen 
 and by no means impoverishing himself. Beginning with nothing, 
 he cannot have cleared less than $20,000 in the last six years, and 
 his income must now be at least $5,000 per annum. And this is 
 not all made by merely talking and writing about farming, but in 
 good part by actual work. For example : He last year bought 
 ten acres of naturally good but exhausted and weedy land adjoin- 
 ing him for $250 per acre, pulverized and fertilized it thoroughly 
 to the depth of two j'ivt, planted it with cabbages as close to- 
 gether as they could grow, and by the sale of his first crop paid 
 for the mamnv, labor and land, having the latter all clear at the 
 year's end. and in far better condition than when he bought it. 
 < 'an any enemy of ' Book-Farming 1 beat this? Or is there any 
 of them who would not like to know exactly how this land was 
 fertilized and tilled, even though he should be obliged to read it 
 in a book or periodical ? 
 
 III. Let me next illustrate the importance and advantages of 
 the careful Analysis of Soils : 
 
 A friend bought, one year ago. a small farm which had pre- 
 viously been under decent or ordinary cultivation, but which, it 
 appears, had been for many years mainly fertilized with Gypsum 
 or Plaster of Paris an excellent thing in its place, and which had 
 doubtless done the land good service. But the new farmer's 
 brother is a thorough Chemist, devoting much attention to Agri- 
 culture ; and he was invited to analyze the soil of this farm with 
 a view to its prospective and economical improvement. Careful 
 Analysis showed a signal deficiency of Lime, but a superabund- 
 ance of Sulphur and other ingredients of Plaster. Of course, at 
 
18 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 each successive application of Plaster the plants took up the Lime 
 only, leaving all the residue to lie inert in the soil ; and so the 
 old farmer had for years been feeding his soil, at the rate of 
 twenty to thirty cents per bushel, with the requisite Lime brought 
 from a distance in the form of Piaster, while there was far better 
 Lime burned all around him, and for sale in abundance at six 
 cents a bushel ! The loss thus incurred may have averaged fifty 
 dollars per annum all for want of an AnalvV that might have 
 cost ten to twenty dollars. And there are tens of thousands to- 
 day farming just as blindly as did this old farmer. 
 
 Can there be any rational wonder that farmers seldom grow 
 rich by such Farming ? How is a wise and judicious economy of 
 means to be attained if ignorance and waste are to reap the re- 
 wards properly due only to intelligence and frugality 1 If I were 
 to buy paper and other materials used in my business as care- 
 lessly and blindly as this old farmer bought manures and fertilized 
 his land, I could not continue to print newspapers for a single 
 year. Wiser, more prudent, more intelligent publishers, would 
 undersell and supplant me, and I must fail and be driven into 
 some vocation where ignorance, heedlessness and unthrift secure 
 the rewards designed by Providence for intelligence, industry and 
 economy. 
 
 IV. But- let' us pause at that word Industry. " By Industry 
 we thrive," is an old saw, which is very well in it's place ; but the 
 truth contained in proverbs is so curtly expressed that it often 
 misleads more than it directs. Industry is indeed essential to 
 thrift, and farmers, like other men, often need to be reminded 
 of it. When I note one who is overwhelmed with " business," 
 which calls him away from home two or three days in each week, 
 and keeps him hanging about the tavern or store while his boys 
 are at play and his potatoes crying for the hoe, I know whither 
 that farmer is tending, and can guess about how long he will have 
 any land to mismanage. And I think that, in the average, farmers 
 waste more hours than mechanics. They have more idle time 
 not necessarily, but quite commonly so regarded through bad 
 weather, severe cold, too much wet, &c. than falls to the lot of 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 19 
 
 almost any other class ; and it is very easy to allure many of 
 them away to shoot at other men's turkies when they should be 
 growing food for their own. But while many waste precious 
 hours, quite as much through heedlessness and want of system as 
 indolence, I know another class who slave themselves out of com- 
 fort and out of thought by incessant, excessive drudgery, who are 
 so absorbed in obtaining the means of living that they never find 
 time to live who drive through the day so that their bones ache 
 and their minds are foggy at night ; and are so overworked 
 through the week that they can neither worship God nor enjoy 
 the society of their families on the Sabbath. These men will 
 often tell you they have no time to read, which is just as rational 
 as for the captain of a steamship to plead a want of time to con 
 suit his compass and chart or keep a reckoning of his ship's pro- 
 gress. No time to read ! do they not find time to plant and sow, 
 to reap and mow, and r\vn t<> cat and sleep? If they do, then 
 they may find time, if they will, to learn how to apply their labor 
 to the best advantage as well as to qualify themselves by rest 
 and refreshment for working at all. I venture the assertion that 
 there are twenty thousand fanm-rs in Indiana who would have 
 been wealthier as well as more useful, more respected and happier 
 men this day, if they had abstracted ten hours per week from 
 labor during all their adult life, and devoted those hours to read- 
 ing and thought, in part with a view to improvement in their owa 
 vocation, but in part also looking to higher and nobler ends than 
 even this. Some men waste the better part of their lives in dis- 
 sipation and idleness ; but this does not excuse in others the waste 
 of time equally precious in mere animal effort to heap up goods 
 and comforts which we must leave behind so soon and for ever. 
 
 V. I read very few old books ; I can hardly find time to 
 master the best new ones ; but I have no doubt that those who 
 do read the very oldest treatises on Agriculture which have sur- 
 vived the ravages of tii . will find Cato, or Seneca, or Columella, 
 or whoever may be the author in hand, talking to the farmers of 
 his day very much as our farmers are now generally talked to, 
 and inculcating substantially the same truths : " Plow deeper, fer- 
 tilize more thoroughly, cultivate less land, and cultivate it better ;" 
 
20 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 such, I have no doubt, has been the burden of Agricultural admo- 
 nition and exhortation from the days of Homer and Moses. It 
 seems incredible to modern skepticism that millions of Hebrews 
 could have for ages inhabited the narrow and rocky land of Judea ; 
 and it would be hard to believe, if we were ignorant of the Agra- 
 rian law of Moses, under which, as population increased, the ina- 
 lienable patrimony of each family became smaller and smaller, 
 and the cultivation of course better and better. Very few of us 
 are at all aware of the average capacity of an arable acre, if sub- 
 jected to thorough scientific culture. Many a family of four or 
 five persons has derived a generous subsistence for year after 
 year from a single acre. The story of a farmer who was com 
 pelled to sell off half his little estate of eight or ten acres, and 
 was most agreeably surprised by finding the reward of his labor 
 quite as large when it was restricted to the remaining half as 
 when it was bestowed on the whole, was very current in Roman 
 literature two thousand years ago. Why it is that men persist in 
 running over much land, instead of thoroughly cultivating a little, 
 defying not only Science, but Experience, the wisdom of the fire- 
 side as well as that of the laboratory, can only be accounted for 
 by supposing that men have a natural passion for annexation, a 
 pride in extended dominion, or else a natural repugnance to fol- 
 lowing good advice. Surely, if Wisdom ever cried in the streets, 
 she has been bawling herself hoarse these twenty-five centuries 
 against the folly of maintaining fences and paying taxes on a 
 hundred acres of land in order to grow a crop that might have 
 been produced from ten. 
 
 But the sinners against light and knowledge in our day have 
 far less excuse than their remote ancestors, or even their own 
 grandfathers. It was always well to urge deep plowing and the like ; 
 but so long as the plow was but a forked log or stick, with one 
 prong sharpened for a coulter, and the other employed as a beam, 
 it was hardly possible to plow thoroughly. In our day, however, 
 the advance from wooden plows through iron points nnd iron 
 mold-boards, to iron plows, steel points, steel plows, and subsoil- 
 ing, has been so signal and decisive that the shiftless creature 
 who with his two lean ponies skims and skins over the fields he 
 
TEACH AS TO FAHMIXG. 21 
 
 ought either to cultivate or let alone ; scratching their surface mild- 
 ly to a depth of three or four inches ; sins against such an array of 
 light and knowledge that he is for less excusable than his ancestors 
 who did not pretend to plow at all, but stuck in a seed here and 
 there as they could easiest find a hole or make one, and trusted 
 to Providence to give them an undeserved return for their spirits 
 less and frivolous efforts. 
 
 VI. The three main features of Agricultural advancement 
 among the Anglo-Saxon race now-a-days are: 1. DEEP PLOWING, 
 OR SUB-SOILING ; 2. DRAINING ; 3. IRRIGATION. I am quite aware 
 that Draining should take juwih-iHv in the order of time, yet I 
 believe, in point of fact, Deep Plowing has led to Draining, by 
 demonstrating its necessity, and not Draining to Deep Plowing. 
 \V ulViT immensely from drouth in this country. Probably 
 the aggregate annual loss from drouth alone throughout the Union 
 decidedly exceeds, taking one year with another, the entire cost 
 of our Federal (jovorninent. Yet we know that the roots of 
 most plants will descend to moisture, no matter how dry the sur- 
 face, if the earth beneath them is porous, mellow and inviting. 
 Hetuv wo reali/ethe immense importance of Deep Plowing ; and, 
 after doubling our teams and sinking our deepest plows to the 
 beam, we summon to our aid the Sub-Soil implement, and go 
 down a depth beyond that of anv single furrow. But we soon 
 find that the pulverization of the suit-soil, thus attained, has no 
 permanent effect ; that the water that leaches down to it settles 
 it into a compact, solid mass, which the roots cannot penetrate ; 
 and all our sub-soiling needs to be done over again. The remedy 
 that readily suggests itself is the freeing of the sub-soil from 
 water by drains sunk below it, say three to six rods apart, and 
 filled half way up with pebbles, with flat stones forming a sort 
 of culvert, or, still better, laid with draining-tile or hollow brick, 
 placed end to end, and forming a continuous channel from the 
 highest part of any slope or grade to t'he brook which drains it. 
 And now the sub-soil, supposing the drains well made and the 
 drainage-way sufficient, is readily freed from any water settling 
 into it, and long retains the porous and permeable character com- 
 municated to it by deep plowing. 
 
22 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 Of course, this does not exhaust the good effects of Draining. 
 The sub-soil, thus loosened and freed from excessive moisture, 
 becomes a source of food as well as drink to the plants growing 
 above it ; for that it is capable 01 feeding plants, no one, who has 
 observed the rank vegetation growing out of the earth thrown up 
 by draining or digging, can doubt. Instead of being like a slough 
 in wet weather and like a brick in dry, the sub-soil retains suffi- 
 cient moisture to cheer the plants, but too little to indurate itself. 
 And the mean temperature of the soil, hitherto lowered by the 
 constant evaporation of the water contained in the sub-soil, is 
 raised several degrees by the sun's rays, no longer counteracted by 
 the evaporating process at least, not to any such extent as be- 
 fore so that the plants grow more luxuriantly, mature more 
 rapidly, and so are earlier out of danger from frost. And beside 
 this, the constant passage of currents of air through that portion 
 of the drain not occupied by water and each drain should have 
 an opening at its head as well as at its mouth is an additional 
 source of fertility through the chemical combinations it insures. 
 It would be difficult to overstate the value, the importance, the 
 profit of Draining. 
 
 Many are accustomed to say, " This land needs no draining ;" 
 meaning that it is not habitually too wet. But draining proves 
 as useful, if it is not as imperatively necessary, on dry soil as on 
 wet. On dry lands it is required that the sub-soil, once broken 
 up and pulverized, shall not, by the settling of moisture therein 
 during the wet season, be hardened and rendered impervious 
 again ; these lands need to be rendered porous and penetrable by 
 roots to a greater depth because of their dryness ; they need to be 
 shielded from the pernicious effects of constant evaporation in 
 cooling the soil, and thus retarding the growth of its plants. 
 There is very much land not worth tilling ; but there is none that 
 will justify tillage which would not reward Draining. 
 
 Of Irrigation, we in this country know very little by experi- 
 ence ; but we are destined soon to know more, and to be profited 
 by our knowledge. True, there are lands that ma^ be readily 
 drained and sub-soiled that cannot so readily be irrigated, owing 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 23 
 
 to their elevation and a deficient supply of water. I apprehend, 
 however, that these lands are not to be found in Indiana, nor in 
 any other Prairie State, whose first peculiarities that strike a 
 stranger are a superabundance of water in tin.- rainy season and 
 a scarcity thereof in the dry. The time is at hand when you 
 will here require extensive and powerful pumping apparatus, if 
 only to raise water for your heavy stocks of cattle and convey it to 
 the pastures wherein they will be confined ; and why not raise 
 enough of the grateful fluid to refresh pastures and cattle alike ? 
 
 But even though this assured and ample resource were non- 
 existent, I maintain that water enough foils on your fields every 
 year to keep them fresh and luxuriant through the summer, if it 
 were saved and not wasted. But most of it falls during the 
 seasons when least is wanted, and is suffered to run off to the 
 rivers and the ocean, carrying very much of the best juices of the 
 soil along with it, when it should be retained in ponds and 
 voirs to be pumped into barn-yards or drawn oil' to irrigate the 
 fields during the fervid heats of summer. The apparent difficulty 
 of doing this would vanish and the presumed expense be materi- 
 ally lessened on careful consideration. 
 
 I know not that I have traversed any country with more lively 
 interest than beautiful, bountiful, picturesque Lombardy. The 
 dark pall of Austrian despotism enveloping it did not suffice to 
 dim its natural loveliness and luxuriance, so greatly improved by 
 the labor and genius of Man. It seems to have grown into its 
 system of almost universal irrigation by imperceptible and un- 
 marked degrees, and to be now producing double hur\ ests annually 
 as the result of some fortuitous impulse rather than of foresight 
 and deliberate calculation. The magnificent plain of Upper Italy, 
 which has for so many centuries been the field of combat where 
 Goth and Latin, Frank and Hun, Gaul and German, have struggled 
 for the mastery of Europe, slopes almost imperceptibly from 
 the Alps to the Po, and the impetuous torrents which tear the 
 rocky sides of the snow-crowned precipices are arrested and chas- 
 tened in the blue Lakes which lie at the foot of the mountains, 
 smiling serenely out upon the plain. Thence the waters proceed 
 
24 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 with a more gentle and measured cadence to the great River, 
 and are drawn off and stayed from point to point to fill the irri- 
 gating canals and insure a rich reward to the husbandman's labors. 
 Let any stream from heavy rains become a raging, foaming, 
 milky torrent, and its waters have a value which the pure element 
 could not command, and are drawn off on every side until the 
 canals and reservoirs are filled and all danger of inundation pre- 
 cluded. Thus the waters are most valuable for irrigation just 
 when they are most easily and abundantly obtainable for that 
 purpose. The water which has irrigated one fertile garden or 
 field, far from being exhausted, has been rendered more nourish- 
 ing thereby, and may now be drawn off to fertilize the next field, 
 lying an inch or so lower, and thence to the next, and so on to the 
 river, enriching and gladdening all it touches on its way. Irrigation 
 is the life-blood of Lombardy ; shall it be nothing, teach nothing, 
 to us? 
 
 If there be a country on earth which one would suppose irriga- 
 tion unsuited to, Great Britain is that country. Her exceedingly 
 moist, cool climate, coupled with her compact, clay subsoil (not 
 universal, but very extensive) would seem to render a deficiency 
 of moisture one of the very last evils to be apprehended or guarded 
 against in her Agriculture. And yet her best farmers are now 
 embarking rapidly and extensively in Irrigation, finding it prac- 
 ticable and immensely profitable. Not here, as in Lombardy, is 
 the natural flow of the streams, in their descent from the hills to 
 the rivers, relied on ; but great pumps are employed, raising 
 water by steam or other power from rivers, brooks and ponds, 
 to a hight whence it is carried by gravitation through metallic 
 and gutta-percha pipes to every point where it is needed. Mr. 
 Mechi, the ex-London merchant, who retired from trade with a 
 competency to earn another by scientific farming, takes the lead 
 in this application, and his estimates of the increased productive- 
 ness of lands by reason of irrigation and the profits thus secured 
 would seem wild to any audience unfamiliar with the subject. I 
 may state, however, that he fixes the expense of conveying his 
 manures in liquid form from his yard to every portion of his es- 
 tate as equivalent to one penny sterling or two cents per cartload 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 25 
 
 that is to say, the fertilizing properties which were contained 
 in a tun of muck or compost are now conveyed to the soil that 
 requires them at the cost of one penny. That loading, teaming, 
 unloading and spreading in the old way must have cost far nunv 
 than this, you cannot doubt : beside, the fertilizing liquid, being 
 entirely free from seeds or weedy germs of any kind, and in A 
 condition to be readily and totally absorbed by plants, must he 
 worth twice as much as if applied in the old way. Now consider 
 that this load of manure has been conveyed through and applied 
 with many tuns of water, just when the soil is most thirsty, and 
 the plants most needy, and you can readily judge that the tun of 
 manure dissolved in water and applied through irrigating pip --> 
 at the cost of a penny, must be worth at least thriee as nun-h as 
 the same tun applied in the crude, solid state, at a cost of not 
 less than thrice that sum. But I must not dwell on details. You 
 have the general idea, and can follow it out at your leisure into 
 all its necessary results. 
 
 VII. What the Sister Arts teach as to Agriculture may be fair- 
 ly summed up in this proposition : 
 
 THE WORKMAN SHOULD BE COMPLETELY MASTER OF HIS MATERIALS 
 AND ins IMPLEMENTS. He should first thoroughly understand, in 
 order that he may in the next plaee thoroughly control, the ele- 
 ments from which he is to evolve value and sustenance. He who 
 should undertake to build a ship, in ignorance of the relative 
 tenacity and resistance to pressure of the various woods and 
 metals, would rush into a pursuit for which he had no capacity; 
 so would he who should undertake the running of a steam-engine 
 in ignorance of the nature and power of steam. Yet the man 
 who attempts to farm with an imperfect knowledge of the nature 
 and properties of Soils in general, of the laws of Vegetation, the 
 qualities and peculiarities of the particular soils whereof his farm 
 is composed, and the cheapest means of renovating and increas- 
 ing their fertility and productiveness, stands on the same plat- 
 form with the ignorant shipwright or engineer, and braves like 
 disasters, whereof the largest share will naturally fall to himself 
 and his family. Agriculture is a pursuit so vast in its scope, so 
 2 
 
26 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 various in its processes and objects, that it is difficult to lay down 
 a general rule with regard to it that will admit of no exceptions ; 
 yet I will venture to propound one, which is as follows : The 
 cultivator whose farm is not more valuable and more productive as 
 one result of each year's tillage, does not understand his vocation, 
 and ought to learn it or quit it. 
 
 Perhaps there is no single field of observation wherein the ex- 
 tent and disastrous effects of ignorance among farmers are more 
 strikingly exhibited than in that of Insect Life and Ravages. It 
 has pleased the All- Wise to subject Agriculture to the chances 
 and perils of Insect depredations, as well as to weeds, drouth, 
 frost, inundation, and other evils. The end of all these is benefi- 
 cence the evolution and discipline of Man's capacities through 
 the necessary counteraction and combat. Plants and domestic 
 animals rightfully look to their owner for efficient protection ; and 
 he who allows his sheep to be killed by wolves, his fowls to be 
 carried off by foxes, or his grain to be devoured by insects, is 
 culpably faithless to his dependents and his duty. Yet how list- 
 lessly, thoughtlessly, hopelessly, do we see farmers stand by 
 while their crops are destroyed by worms, birds, or weevil, with- 
 out seeming to know that they have anything to do in the prem- 
 ises 1 No Turkish fatalism is blinder or blanker than theirs. It 
 is hardly yet six weeks since I saw whole counties of my own 
 State covered and devastated by grasshoppers, who stripped the 
 dry uplands of every blade of grass, almost every green leaf, 
 cutting the green oats from their stalks, the fruit from the trees, 
 devouring corn in the ear, making the cleared land a desert, and 
 pushing the cattle to the very verge of starvation. Yet there 
 stood the farmers, gazing gloomily from day to day at the de- 
 struction of their cherished hopes of a harvest and the utter deso- 
 lation of the whole country, yet not one asking of another, " What 
 shall we do to arrest this sweeping ravage ? How shall we most 
 readily, cheaply and surely clear our lands of these vermin f 
 I do not pretend to know what the proper remedy was or is ; 
 but this I do know, that, had / been one of these farmers, I 
 would have found a remedy or bankrupted myself in the search. 
 I should have first interrogated the best authorities on Agriculture 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 27 
 
 and Natural History, and, in case of finding no guidance there, 
 I should have sowed one acre of my land bountifully with Salt ; 
 the next with Plaster ; the next perhaps with Nitre ; a fourth 
 with Potash ; and so on. using in all cases substances that I knew 
 would be paid for by future harvests, unless I had reason to be- 
 lieve something else would be more efficient. Thus, before one 
 week had elapsed, I would have found some caustic that grass- 
 hoppers could not abide ; and having found it, 1 would have ap- 
 plied it until the last cormorant among them had been driven into 
 the woods or turned over on his back. And this is the spirit in 
 which every such invasion should be met and overcome. Had 
 the farmers of any township promptly met, when the ravage 
 first became serious, and agreed that one of them would try one 
 possible antidote and another another, according as they happened 
 respectively to have the material at command, and met again a few 
 evenings later to compare notes on the results of their several 
 experiments, they could not have failed to discover an efficient 
 remedy within the first work. But they did nothing; and hence 
 many of their farms are a desert, their Fall crops next to nothing, 
 and half their cattle must be sold or killed for want of food. 
 
 Our farmers generally think and work better out of their own 
 vocation than in it. A distant and towering evil arouses their 
 hostility and evokes their energy much more readily than one of 
 a less imposing but more mischievous character which assails 
 them in their homes. Let the word go forth, "An army of in- 
 vaders have landed !" and tens of thousands snatch instinctively 
 their muskets and take the road ; but here are armies all around 
 them who are plundering them worse than any invaders would, 
 yet hardly attract their notice. The Hessians who were hired to 
 subjugate our fathers had no rest for their feet until the last of 
 them was killed, captured or hunted home, more than seventy 
 years ago; yet their attendant parasite, the Hessian Fly, has been 
 plundering us ever since without resistance, and is now as formida- 
 ble and destructive as ever. I cannot believe flies more difficult 
 to conquer than men, if we would but fairly set about it. 
 
 VII. And here let me retrace my steps to illustrate a point in 
 
28 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 Industrial Economy which I have already incidentally touched, 
 but have riot illustrated as its importance deserves, and as the 
 prevailing misconceptions render necessary. I refer to The Pro- 
 portion of Means to Ends, which the Artisan must always bear in 
 mind, but which the Farmer seems too often to forget. No artifi- 
 cer presumes that the labor and materials required for a fine table 
 will suffice for a piano-forte ; nor that a steam-engine can be con- 
 structed as cheaply as a churn. But the farmer, seeing trees and 
 plants grow around him with weed-like facility and tenacity, often 
 indolently imagines that any tree will grow so, and plants his 
 rare and delicate fruit-trees, if he plants such at all, as if they 
 were oaks or locusts. But Nature is inexorable in her require- 
 ment that the labor and care essential to the production of a 
 choice fruit or plant shall be proportionate to the value of the 
 product. You may grow Pine on yellow sand or Hickory on 
 blue clay ; but if you want choice Pears or Peaches you must 
 devote much labor and expense to preparing and enriching the 
 ground wherein your trees are to be set. Too many farmers, not 
 heeding this law, or supposing that Nature may somehow be cir- 
 cumvented, obtain worthless fruit or none at all, and so abandon 
 the culture in disgust and despair. 
 
 There is not now one grape-vine or fruit-tree, except of the 
 coarsest and commonest kinds, where there should be twenty, 
 taking one State with another ; and one consequence of this is an 
 enormous and perilous consumption of flesh as food, to an extent 
 unknown in other countries. We are nationally surfeited with 
 pork and tainted with Scrofula, not because we are so fond of 
 pork, but because, for an important portion of each year, the ma- 
 jority of our population can get little beside. " The foolishness 
 of preaching" will never suffice to correct this aberration ; for 
 men who work must eat, though their food be not the best ; but 
 give us an abundance of the choicest fruits and vegetables, with 
 farmers who know how to grow them, and truly educated house- 
 wives, who delight in preparing and serving them, and we shall 
 enjoy health, elasticity and longevity to an extent now unknown. 
 A flesh diet is the dearest, the least palatable and the least whole- 
 some, and all that is needed to wean men from it is the presenta- 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 29 
 
 tion of a better. To secure this, we need only farmers who will 
 feel a just pride in having the finest orchards and gardens who 
 will surround, not merely their own dwellings, but those of their 
 tenants and helpers also, with choice trees ; and who will plant 
 and keep planting until good fruit shall be so abundant that it can 
 be no longer an object to steal it. 
 
 But I detain you too long, though many suggestions crowd 
 upon me which I would gladly develop, did time permit. I would 
 like to illustrate that inspiring theme, THE HARMONY OF IXTKK- 
 ESTS between Farmer and Manufacturer, \\liich renders each new 
 factory or workshop established in an agricultural county or dis- 
 trict a positive accession of wealth to every farmer who lives 
 within the radius of its influence. You may readily perceive the 
 addition of value given to each farm in Indiana by any canal or 
 railroad which cheapens the cost of sending that farm's surplus 
 produce to market that is, to producers of the wares you re- 
 quire or the fabrics you consume; and how much greater must 
 be the saving, the benefit, to Indiana, of bringing to her soil or 
 near it, instead of tin- fabrics, their manufacturers, so as to render 
 them perpetual and more extensive consumers of her produce, I 
 need not surely insist on. 
 
 But I pass over this and kindred topics, not as out of place but 
 out of time, to dwell for a moment on the necessity that every 
 where exists for increased facilities to Practical Education. 
 
 I have been exhorting your young farmers to study and master 
 the vocation to which their lives are to be devoted and that is 
 right but what if they were to turn on me with the inquiry 
 " Where shall we study ?" How shall I answer them if they ask, 
 " How and where are we to learn how to analyze soils and make 
 ourselves familiar with all the Science which lies at the base of 
 Agriculture as well as Mechanics ]" I can only say to them, 
 " We in New-York are determined, as soon as may be, to have a 
 PEOPLE'S COLLEGE to teach these important, vital truths to all 
 who seek them, and to enable them to pay their way by their 
 labor while learning ; and we trust you in Indiana will speedily 
 
30 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 follow if you do not precede us." That is the best that can be 
 said to-day ; I trust ere long to be able to speak more to the pur- 
 pose. 
 
 I do not seek to disguise the magnitude and the difficulty of the 
 work I contemplate that of revolutionizing our Agriculture, and 
 making it the most elevated and ennobling, because the most intel- 
 lectual, pursuit of man. I realize the mountains of Prejudice that 
 are to be leveled, the Dead Seas of Ignorance that must be filled 
 up, the constitutional immobility of Conservatism that must be 
 overcome, before the end can be attained. But I see also how 
 " the stars in their courses " fight in behalf of Progress and En- 
 lightenment how immense has been the march of Intelligence as 
 well as Invention and Physical Improvement in our age how the 
 Steamboat, the Railroad, the Steam Press, the Ocean Steamship, 
 the Electric Telegraph, are speeding us onward with a momentum 
 the world has never before known and I hear a voice from all 
 these and many a kindred impulse and influence, bidding Man the 
 Cultivator advance boldly and confidently to take his proper post 
 as lord of the animal kingdom and wielder of the elements for the 
 satisfaction of his wants and the development of his immortal 
 powers. I hear them calling him to vindicate the discernment or 
 the prescience of those glorious old Greeks who gave our Earth 
 in her young luxuriance the name of Kosmos or BEAUTY a name 
 belied by our scarred and stumpy grain-fields, our seared and 
 barren pastures, our bleak and arid deserts, our foul, malarious 
 marshes ; but which Science shall yet justify and joyous Labor 
 perpetuate. In spite of all distractions and impediments, " the 
 world does move," and even the most sluggish and stubborn are 
 carried along with it. Our Agriculture, as a whole, is more 
 skillful and efficient than it was thirty or forty years ago ; and it 
 is now improving in accelerated ratio. Even I, the descendant 
 of a line of poor cultivators, stretching back, very likely, to him 
 who through his own blindness and fatuity lost the situation of 
 head-gardener in Eden even I feel the all-pervading impulse 
 toward improvement and reform. I can never be a Scientific farm- 
 er I am too old and too heavily laden with duties and cares for 
 that but my son, if he lives, shall be. The little I can teach him 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 31 
 
 shall at least inspire him with a craving for more, and set him on 
 the right track to learn it. And thus tens of thousands are grow- 
 ing up all around us children, perhaps, of ignorance and ineffi- 
 ciency who shall be leaders and guides in the great work to 
 which this Address is a feeble but earnest contribution. 
 
 Hawthorne, in his " Three-Fold Destiny," tells the story of a 
 young man who wandered all the world over in quest of three 
 wonderful incidents, which, it had been predicted, should occur lo 
 him ; and returned disappointed and spirit-broken to find them all 
 under the shadow of his paternal roof. I perceive in this tale, 
 as in every work of true genius, some reflection of a universal 
 fact; an appeal to the general experience and the heart of Hu- 
 manity. How many have chased deluding phantoms through the 
 fervid noontide of life, only to find, as evening shadows drew 
 around them, that Ambition had no goal, Achievement no triumph, 
 to equal the calm, perennial joys of a humble rural home ! 
 
 I commend the moral of Hawthorne's story to our young men, 
 who are from year to year setting forth so bravely to wrench 
 fortune from the golden sands of California, or win her among 
 the young cities that, emulating the growth of Jonah's gourd, are 
 beginning to dot the American shores of the great Pacific. Far 
 be it from me to insinuate that their venture is a wild one, and 
 their hopes necessarily doomed to ultimely blight. I have faith 
 in American energy ; still more in sturdy, persistent, intelligent 
 Industry ; and I feel sure that a clime so genial, a country so 
 diversified in its natural features, a soil so deep and virgin, as 
 those of California, must proffer many inducements to the hardy, 
 resolute pioneer, even though that soil be here and there sprin- 
 kled with gold. Such an enterprise as the peopling and settling 
 of a country so new and so remote from prior civilization, will, 
 of course, demand its martyrs : in its prosecution thousands will 
 die, and tens of thousands fail ; but the enterprise itself will 
 neither die nor fail ; and many of those who fitly embark in it 
 will achieve, at last, success and competence. What I would say 
 is addressed rather to the tens of thousands whom filial or parental 
 ties retain among us, while they impatiently champ the bit and 
 
32 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 
 
 say, " Why am not /, too, at liberty to cross the Rocky Moun- 
 tains and gather my share of the golden harvest f To these I 
 would earnestly say, " Believe not, repining friends ! that Cali- 
 fornia and fortune are inseparable, nor forget that there were 
 broad avenues to success and competence before Fremont un- 
 furled his Bear standard in the valley of the Sacramento." Nay : 
 be assured that, right here in Indiana, are ample placers for all 
 who will resolutely and wisely work them placers, whereof the 
 yield may be less per pan or day than that of some of the richest 
 " gulches" on the Feather or the Yuba ; but then it is certain, 
 inexhaustible, and sure to prove more and more abundant with 
 each returning season. The deeper these mines are worked, the 
 more ample is the return ; they require no outlay of skill or 
 labor in " prospecting ;" for every arable rood will reward the 
 digger's efforts, and from the Ohio to the Missouri he will find 
 hardly any other than " pay-dirt." 
 
 As for me, long-tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful con 
 flict and arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades 
 of forty years fell upon me, the weary, tempest-driven voyager's 
 longing for land, the wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in 
 childhood he nestled by his mother's knee, and was soothed to 
 sleep on her breast. The sober down-hill of life dispels many 
 illusions while it developes or strengthens within us the attach- 
 ment, perhaps long smothered or overlaid, for " that dear hut, our 
 home." And so I, in the sober afternoon of life, when its sun, if 
 not high, is still warm, have bought me a few acres of land in 
 the broad, still country, and, bearing thither my household trea- 
 sures, have resolved to steal from the City's labors and anxieties 
 at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a farmer the 
 memories of my childhood's humble home. And already I real- 
 ize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. 
 Already I find in that day's quiet an antidote and a solace for 
 the feverish, festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Al- 
 ready my brook murmurs a soothing even-song to my burning, 
 throbbing brain ; and my trees, gently stirred by the fresh breezes, 
 whisper to my spirit something of their own quiet strength and 
 patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly realize, though but 
 
TEACH AS TO FARMING. 33 
 
 for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which shall irradiate the 
 Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer Education shall have 
 refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science shall 
 have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming Labor from 
 drudgery while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with 
 beauty and plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth. 
 
14 jJAl \. _>.^ 
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