The Wyandot pioneer. (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1853-1868, 1853-11-10

they can neither worship God nor enjoy
the society of their families on the Sab
bath. These men will often tell you they
have no time to read, which is just as ra-
tional as for the captain of steamship to
plead want of time to consult his com
pass and chart OF keep reckoning of his
ships progress. No time to read! do
they not find time to plant and SOW, to
reap and NOW, and even to eat and sleep?
If they do, then they may find time, If
they will, to learn how to apply their Ia
Dor to the best advantage as well as to
qualify themselves by rest and refresh
ment for working at all. I venture the
assertion that there are twenty thousand
farmers in Indiana who would have been
wealthier as we'll as more useful, more ,e-
spected and happier men this day, if they
had distracted ten hours per week from
labor during all their adult life, and de-
voted those hours to reading and thought,
in part with view to improvements their
own vocation, but in part also looking to
higher and nobler ends than even this
Some men waste the better part of their
lives in dissipation 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 forever.
Il can read very few old books-I
can hardly find time to master the best
new ones; but have no doubt that those
who do read the very Oldest treasties on
Agriculture which have survived the raw
ages of time, 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 gene
rally talked to, and inculcatipg substan-
TALLY the same truths: ''Plow deeper, fer
tilize more thoroughly, cultivate less land,
and cultivate it better"-such, / have no
doubt, has been the burden of Agricul-
tural admonition and exhortation from
the days of Homer and Moses. It seems
increditable to modern skepticism that
millions of Hebrews could have for ages
inhabited the narrow and rocky land of
Judea; and it aoould be hard to believe, if
we were ignorant of the Agrarian law of
Moses, under which, as population in
creased, the inalienable patrimony of each
family became smaller and smaller, and
and the cultivation of course better and
better. Very few of us are at all aware
of the capacity of an arabic acre, if SUBJ
jected to thorough scientific culture
Many a family of four or FIVE persons has
derived a generous subsistence for year
after year from single acre. The story
of farmer who was compelled to sell off
half his little estate of eight or ten acres,
and was most agreeably surprised by find
ing 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 is it that men
persist in rnnning over much land,
instead of thoroughly cultating little,
defying not only Science, but Experience,
the wisdom of the freside as we'll as that
of the laboratory, can only be accounted
for by supposing that men have natural
passion for annexation, pride in extend
ed dominion, or else natural repugnance
to following good advice. Surely, if wis
dom ever cried in the streets, she has
been bawling herself hoarse these twenty
five centuries against the folly of maintain
ing fences and paying taxes on hundred
acres Of land in order to grow crop that
might have been produced from ten
But the sinners against lighta and knowl-
edge in our day have far less excuse than
their remote ancestors, or even their own
grandfathers. 1t was always well to urge
deep plowing and the like; but SO long as
the plow was but 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 wood
en- plows through iron points and iron
mold-boards, to iron plows, steel points,
steel plows, and subsoiling, has been SO
signal and decisive that the shiftless Great
ure who with his two lean ponies skins
and skins over the fields he ought either
to cultivate or let Misunderstanding their
surface mildly to a depth of three or four
'inches,-sins against such an array of
light and knowledge that he is far less ex-
cusable than his ancestors who did not
pretend to plow at all, but stuck in seed
here and there as the could easiest find
hole or make one, and trusted to Provi-
dence to give them an undeserved return
for their spiritless and frivolous eff
forts. i-
The three main features of Agricultu-
raj advancement among the Anglo-Saxon
race now a-days are: 1. deep plowing, or
Sub -Soiling; 2. Draining; 8. Irrigation.
am quite aware that draining should
70 l.a rracadenca in the order of time vet