Oxford Democrat

From the Rural New Yorker.

Agricultural Books and Experiments.

We have a host of books on agriculture, many, perhaps all, containing useful information, yet we sometimes throw down one of these works, exclaiming, "farmers are not much to blame for entertaining a prejudice against book farming." Perhaps we resolve to show them up with all their faults, as the only means of improving our agricultural literature. A celebrated divine, who once conducted an agricultural journal, and who, no doubt, often had the same feelings, lately remarked, "American Agricultural Literature suffers for want of just criticism." And it is too true. The Agricultural Press, we fear, is not faultless, and we have often resolved upon a reform. But at the outset we find, even in the worst books, many great truths, and we fear to say aught that may prevent the circulation of the good because it is mixed with evil. The greater part may be borrowed or stolen from some previous writer, the little that is original may be unreliable or evidently untrue, but we spare the evil for the sake of the good, and in this we have the example of Him who cannot err, who would have spared even Sodom for the sake of the righteous. Then, we console ourselves with the thought that the farmers of this country are a thinking as well as a reading class, men of good common sense, eminently capable of sifting the chaff from the wheat, and in no danger of swallowing indiscriminately the good and the bad.

When speaking of Agricultural Colleges in a late number, we stated the great want was competent professors, without which colleges, organizations and buildings were worthless. We are equally destitute of competent agricultural book-writers. Who, in all this land, is competent to give us a good and reliable work on practical agriculture—not theories that have been proved a thousand times—nor visionary ideas that never will be proved—but a book giving the teachings of experience, the results of well-tried experiments, teaching truth in a manner not to be gainsaid. A lifetime and a fortune might be well spent in the accumulation of facts for such a book, but when accomplished it would be a blessing to the country and the world, and place the author's name on the roll of fame, away out of sight of the journeymen book-makers, who manufacture books to suit their employers, the publishers.

Perhaps it is better that we make poor books than none, only we fear these interlarded things discourage the necessary effort for something better; for of a poor book that costs about nothing will—who can expect a man to spend his energies, talents and means—the best years of his life—in gathering materials for a good book, when the public's taste seems fully satisfied with an article that sells so little.

The best part of our agricultural literature is to be found in the Agricultural Journals—in the communications of farmers. Here we learn simple fact-truths which nature utters in her own unmistakable language. It is to be regretted that those experiments are not always made with such care as to give in all cases a "certain sound," and it is to call especial attention to the importance of careful experiments, that we now allude to the subject. It is the duty of every farmer to gain all the light he can, and to let that light shine. In no way can valuable knowledge be gained as well as in watching with an eager eye the results of different systems of culture, different manures, crops, &c., while the agricultural journals furnish the best means for presenting the facts to the world.

The following extract from Farmer's Letters, written by Arthur Young, in 1780, is as important and truthful now as it was when penned, nearly a hundred years ago:

"The publication of experiments, really made, faithfully related, and sufficiently authenticated, is of great and important consequence to the public good. But the very reverse is the case of those books which are published under the title of General Treatises and Systems, comprehending more soils, articles of culture, &c., than any one man can experimentally have a knowledge of; consisting of the most heterogeneous parts, purloined out of former books on the same subjects, without a common knowledge to discover the good from the bad. It has been said several times, and with very great justice, that what we want is a Book of Experiments. If any practical husbandman, who occupies a farm, would only keep an exact register of all his business, such a collection would form, so far as it extended, a complete set of experiments. What we have are the author's reflections, instead of that which enabled him to reflect; and from which we might draw very different conclusions. The Experiment is Truth itself: the author's conclusions, matter of opinion which we may either agree to or reject, according to our private notions."

The facts are truth—inferences and conclusions may be true or false. Let us then have the facts, no matter what they teach—even should they overturn some of our most cherished notions.

Potato Apple Dumplings. Boil any quantity of white, mealy potatoes; pare them and mash them with a rolling pin; then dredge in flour enough to form a dough; roll it out to about the thickness of pie crust, and make up the dumplings by putting an apple pared, cored and quartered to each. Boil them one hour.

—Cabbage contains more muscle-sustaining nutriment than any other vegetable whatever. So says an exchange. We always supposed that peas had the first claim to that distinction.