Norwich bulletin., 1916-09-02

10 pay the secdsrnen for advertising
 them.
 | I know I do, now and then, (small type again. please, MT Printer!) But I've at last got to that height of intel ligence that I don't buy any of them till I've first made sure that I've laid
 in all I'm going really to need of some old stand-bys. For instance, I've set 1 tied down, after long testing, upon
 about four sorts of early potatoes as
 being. on the whole, pretty well suited
 to my soil and climatic conditions. But almost every spring, after I've de-
 eided how many I'm likely to need TOT my trade and after planting an
 area to these four kinds presumably l sufficient to meet the natural demand,
 l buy peck or less of some new won l der and stick it in as a trial. Twice ] in twenty odd years I've struck good
 I'm regularly planting. came from these
 tests. More than eighteen times, though, I've found the over-advertised
 narvels to be just miserable f1zzles. So with almost all other varieties | of truck crops. After I've provided for | my trade by planting or sowing an ad- equate supply of the standard sorts. often lay in few five or ten cent packages of attractive sounding Nov cities" and give them try out. Once in great while this results in real discovery. Nine times out of ten, though, it is a waste of time, money, fertilizer and land. F # one can afford the few dimes in- volved and has the land to spare and the disposition of an experimenter this sort of thing gives him just a
 gamblers chance of 'winning,-once in a while.
 But the man who seeds either a garden or farm wholly to any untried 'Novelty:'' no matter how profusely testimonialized or highly advertised or apparently guaranteed would be lack ing in good judgment, to put 1t mildly.
 The same thing holds with farm tools and machines. Dickens knows how many kinds of blows and harroWs and cultiVators I've tried in the course of my farming experience. At this very moment l have five different har- rows. Each one was advertised to do everything ary other harrow could Go and a few other things all of itself.
 I've kept tES five because experience has shown me that each one will do some one limited form of narrowing better than any other within my knowledge. Bat not one of them will do all the work I want 8 harrow to do either well or even decentiy.
 When it comes to blows, matters are even worse. l have one blow which will turn sod pretty well. But Il haven't got blow nor have I ever seen a plow-though I have tried many kinds.-which will turn under all the | trash and coarse manure with which | sometimes cover certain plants five or l six inches deep.'
 Of course I've told of just such blows | which other people said would do this | very thing; sometimes other farmers who averred that they had done it. ] But in my black sticky garden soil | nlnU n 11yI1n I 4,-xr f
 No patent coulter nor trick in "chaining" avails.
 I've had to tall back on a common | blow and an old-fashioned dung fork. | While one man drives another goes ahead and rakes the trash and straw the mould board will cover it. This is | slow work and Wouldn't pay except on | restricted areas devoted to the inten- | siye cultivation of highly remunera- tive crops. .z
 Now, please don't ger the idea that | any farmer ought to fall into a rut | and stay in 1t. Don't misunderstood | me as denouncing all new things for | worthless. New occasions teach new duties and demand new tools. Chang | ing conditions not infrequently make ancient good uncouth."
 Prove all things: hold fast to that | which is good" said the apostle
 True progPessiYenesS demands that | we show no fear of anything new merely because it is new:-no fear nor any more mistrust than is natu- rally due to an untried proposition It | demands that we give the new thing fair show: permit it reasonable op- | portunity to manifest it's inherent mer- its or disclose it's defects; in other words "prove' it whether it be worth its while for us or no.
 Similarly, true wisdom demands that, l having proved a thing, we hold fast to that which has demonstrated itself | good.
 One of my neighbors, who rather brides himself on his shrewdness. says