own, in spite of our slovenly tillage, our neglect and waste of fertilizers, and the frequent failures of our harvests. Belgium, Holland, and northern France, can teach us neatness and thoroughness of cultivation; the British isles may fairly boast of larger and surer crops of Wheat, Oats, Potatoes, and Grass, than we are accustomed to secure; but, in the selection of implements, and in the average efficiency of labor, our best farmers are ahead of then all. Bear with me, then, while I interpose a timid plea for our inventors and patentees of implements, whose solicitations that a trial, or at least an inspection, be accorded to their several contrivances, are too often repelled with churlish rudeness. I realize that our thriving farmers are generally absorbed in their own plans and efforts, and that the agent or salesman who insists on an examination of his new harrow, or pitchfork, or potato-digger, is often extravagant in his assumptions, and sometimes a bore. Still, when I recollect how tedious and how back-breaking were the methods of mowing Grass and reaping Grain with the Scythe and Sickle, which held unchallenged sway in my early boyhood, I entreat the farmer who is petitioned to accord ten or fifteen minutes to the setting forth, by some errant stranger, of the merits of his new horse-hoe or tedder, to give the time, if he can; and that without sour looks or a mien of stolid incredulity. The Biblical monition that, in evincing a generous hospitality, we may sometimes entertain angels unawares, seems to me in point. A new implement may be defective and worthless, and yet contain the germ or suggest the form of a thoroughly good one. Give the inventor or his representative a courteous hearing if you can, even though this should constrain you to make up the time so lost after the day's work would otherwise have ended.