If all who need the information given in your _Elements of Agriculture_ will confess their ignorance as frankly as I do, and seek to dispel it as promptly and heartily, you will have done a vast amount of good by writing it. * * * * * I have found in every chapter important truths, which I, as a would-be-farmer, needed to know, yet which I _did not_ know, or had but a confused and glimmering consciousness of, before I read your lucid and straightforward exposition of the bases of Agriculture as a science. I would not have my son grow up as ignorant of these truths as I did for many times the price of your book; and, I believe, a copy of that book in every family in the Union, would speedily add at least ten per cent. per acre to the aggregate product of our soil, beside doing much to stem and reverse the current which now sets so strongly away from the plow and the scythe toward the counter and the office. Trusting that your labors will be widely regarded and appreciated, I remain yours truly, HORACE GREELEY. New York, June 23, 1854. THE ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURE: A Book for Young Farmers, WITH QUESTIONS PREPARED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. BY GEO. E. WARING, JR., CONSULTING AGRICULTURIST. The effort to extend the dominion of man over nature is the most healthy and most noble of all ambitions.--BACON. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 346 & 348 BROADWAY. M DCCC LIV. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by GEO. E. WARING, JR., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. TO MY FRIEND AND TUTOR, PROF. JAMES J. MAPES, THE PIONEER OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IN AMERICA, This Book IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY HIS PUPIL, THE AUTHOR. TO THE STUDENT. This book is presented to you, not as a work of science, nor as a dry, chemical treatise, but as a plain statement of the more simple operations by which nature produces many results, so common to our observation, that we are thoughtless of their origin. On these results depend the existence of man and the lower animals. No man should be ignorant of their production. In the early prosecution of the study, you will find, perhaps, nothing to relieve its tediousness; but, when the foundation of agricultural knowledge is laid in your mind so thoroughly that you know the character and use of every stone, then may your thoughts build on it fabrics of such varied construction, and so varied in their uses, that there will be opened to you a new world, even more wonderful and more beautiful than the outward world, which exhibits itself to the senses. Thus may you live two lives, each assisting in the enjoyment of the other.