Page:The education of the farmer.djvu/12

 from his parent's and master's example to believe something, and to act upon it; he will be in a better position to judge of the truth of his early convictions when he grows up, if he put them to the test of practice in youth.

I take it for granted that a neighbour of mine represented a general feeling when he said, "Farmers don't wish to be only farmers; they don't forget that they are men." In accordance with this feeling, we must keep two distinct points in view in treating of the education of the farmer.

First, How is he to learn his business as a farmer in the present condition of the British islands?

Secondly, How is he to be a happy member of the society in which he lives?

Our chief business in this Journal is with the first of these points, but they cannot be separated in practice.

The first question which meets us at the outset is. Does the farmer require a special agricultural education?

He is to live by agriculture; must he not learn the art by which he is to live? We might safely answer on general grounds, "All arts are best learnt by practice; and unless there is some special reason why farming should be taught to schoolboys, this art will follow the rule of others, and be learned by apprenticeship after school."

But a moment's attention to what agriculture involves will settle the question. Agriculture is the art of producing human food from a limited extent of land, in the greatest abundance and in the shortest space of time consistent with a profit to the producer. The production of food, in some form, is as old as the human race; in savage life it is obtained by hunting; in the pastoral life, one stage above the savage, food is obtained from flocks and herds; a little further on in civilization, the sowing and reaping of the most fertile spots supply the wants of a scanty peasantry; but in a country with a dense population, requiring a high class of food, with a limited surface of land constantly cropped, the demands of the practical farmer on the resources of science are constant and manifold.

If we consider on what powers of nature human food depends, it is surprising how many departments of knowledge may contribute something to the result. How plants grow—and how animals feed—why some thrive and others are stunted—are questions as yet imperfectly answered: but they are the subject-matter of the science of Physiology; a science, the