The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-01-23
A Young Man Asks Advice.

A young Vermonter, who says he has
been diligent student of this depart
ment, and of the Rural Ne,C- Yorker
and other farm papers, and has also
had the benefit of working under the
direction of Que of the most successful
farmers of his vicinity, writes to us,
saying that he is thinking of a possible
term or two at some agricultural school,
and to ask what course of reading he
had better take in the next few months,
as little preparation for such course
of study. He also desires a few hints,
how to start an agricultural library.
He has had, he says, only common
school education, but his letter indi-
Gates that he has improved such oppor-
tunities as he has enjoyed pretty well.
1t is a pity that every young man
like this could not have full course in
some good agricultural college; and the
time is coming when every state will
have such an institution, with free
scholarships enough, so that no student
seeking its advantages will be turned
away. But meantime, in Vermont, we
fear this particular youth will have be-
come as gray as the writer For his
immediate reading, we suggest the
purchase of Professor Storer's recent
work, entitled d" Agriculture" in two
volumes, costing, we think, 400, which
any bookseller will order for him. For
his brief course of study, he could not
do better than to enter Professor
Cookies class in agricultural chemistry
at Burlington. Unquestionably, the
greatest and most general lack, in the
way of profitable knowledge among
farmers, is the lack of any acquaintance
with this science, upon which, more
than any one thing else, an intelligent
agriculture must be based.
Starting his library with Storer's Ag-
riculture, and with the chemical text
books required at Burlington, we
think President Garfeld's plan of en-
larging his stores of special knowledge
to be at once the cheapest, the best and
the most educative of any. This is
the formation of scrap-books, one for
each subject, made up of cuttings from
the newspapers. Our young friend, if
limited in funds, can easily get almost
any agricultural paper to wants, and
all he wants, either by getting them
subscribers, or by furnishing them with
practical short notes on all sorts of in
teresting farm topics, the style of
which he can soon get into by studying
like things in the papers themselves.
Good cheap foundations for scrap
books are the old Pub. Docs" so
many of which are sent out to men
who care nothing about them. By re-
moving every other leaf, room is made
for the scraps; or two leaves out of the
three, if the scraps are pasted on both
sides of the remaining leaf. The first
way is best, as the other overloads the
leaves and causes them to be easily
torn out Have book for each of the
main departments of farming; and as
sort the articles carefully by topics, in
such way that by the aid of good
index (the progress of which must go
along with the progress of each book
any one can be easily turned to. Great
! 4 ,,,,,oh N
will appear in the views of different
writers, which are sure to be confusing
at first. But, as the collection in
creases, sort of order will begin to
appear in the seeming chaos, and the
sense of superior writers will begin to
prevail Meantime, it is no drawback
to have all shades of opinion and be-
lief before the eyes; because the great
and essential point in the study of so
broad subject as agriculture is, and
always must be, TO recognize its breadth
and multiform diversity-so great that
even for adjoining farms very different
systems may possibly be necessary to
realize the best results. Still, there
are fundamental principles underlying
all conditions, and these, too, will be-
come more and more apparent with
the progress of the work. What ap-
pears extremely confusing at first will
gradually clear itself 10 the mind of
the patient student, and especially to
him who notes carefully the practical
workings of different methods that
come under his personal notice. This
many-sidedness of our business, vexa-
tious as it may seem in the beginning,
becomes in the course of time the thing
that of all others gives it an enduring