The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-08-07
The Bright Side-Continued.

AT hrSt blush, 1t seems very discourage
ing to think that we have put no wider gap
between ourselves and those twilight times.
The gap is, however, far wider than it
seems ; for while those old gentlemen made
good hits in their practice, they rarely an
nounced a principle on which good cultiva-
ton depended, but they were egriously at
fault. The. centuries, with their sciences
and added experience, have solved the
reasons of things; not all of them, indeed
as Liebig in his last book needlessly tells
us-but enough of them to enlist more
intelligent method of culture. The ancients
recommended rule of practice, because it
had succeeded in a score or hundred of
trials but if some day it failed, they must
have CROPPED considerably in the dark for a
cause. We lay down rule of practice in
obedience to certain clearly determined
natural laws and if failure meets us, we
know it is due, not to falsty of the laws,
but to some one of rather wide circle of
contingencies, not foreseen or provided
against. And it is the due adjustment and
measurment of precisely this circle of con-
tingencies, whether belonging to weeds,
weather or markets, which most thorough
ly test the sagacity of the modern farmer
This sagacity is of far larger service
than I think scientific farmers are willing
to admit. Over and over it happens that
some uncouth, raw, strapping, unread man
succeeds year after year in making crops
which astonish the neghborhood. You
know he has no science nitrogen is Greek
to him; sulphuric acid, for all he can tell,
might lie in the juice of an apple; he knows
nothing of lamentations, nothing of phys
iology; yet his crops are monstrous. His
tools are something old, though firm and
compact his team is always in good Or
der, although his barns may be somewhat
shaky.
He could not himself explain to you his
success; you perceive that he manures
well, that he plows thoroughly, that he
plants good seed, that he hoes in season.
This, but all is so well timed by native
sagacity by an instructive sense (as would
seem) Of the wants and habits of the crop
growing out of close observation that the
success is splendid. A man sets up be-
side him, and buys guano and fish, and the
best tools, and employs chemist to analyze
his soil, but his crops do not compare with
those of his rude neighbor, who sneers at
chemistry and fine farming. Of course
do not mean to join him in his sneers +; | only
mean to illustrate how large sagacity,
guided by its own instincts, has very much
to do with good farming, and in a way not
clearly explicable certainly not explicable
by its possessor.
just so, you will sometimes find, far
back in the country, a shrewd old physi-
clan, utterly unread in the new books, who
laughs at the ''Gazette dcs Hopita" and
the "Chirugibal,o and yet who has that
rare insight which enables him to detect
and wrestle with disease strangely well.
Ills long observation, his comparison of
trifles, his estimate of the moral forces at
work are so just and discriminating, that he
brings a tremendous power of judgment to
the case. Put him III room for consulta-
ton and his grey eye tweaks, his lips work
nervously; he cannot enter into the learned
discourse of the younger men Of the pro-
fession he is dazed by it all--wishing he
were learned if learning helps, but when
appeal is made to him, there is such clear,
sagacious, bomely cut-down into the very
marrow of the difficulty, as absolutely con-
POUNDS the younger doctors all this, not
because he does not carry learning, but be-
cause he carries brain and uses it.
Any man with good brains may succeed
IN farming--if he uses them. But this,
mean that any man, with clear head
though not especially crammed with inlor-
matlon-and who brings cool, sagacious,
unblinking, outlook to the office of hus-
bandry, will succeed, without knowledge
OF the principles on which its more import
ant operations are based, And the prac-
tice Of such man if faithfully recorded in all
its details, would be of more service in the
illustration of cciantifto 1auyc tba,, fha half