In the foregoing essays, I have set forth, as clearly as I could, the facts within my knowledge which seem calculated to cast light upon the farmer's vocation, and the principles or rules of action which they have suggested to my mind. I have been careful not to throw any false, delusive halo over this indispensable calling, and by no means to induce the belief that the farmer's lot is necessarily and uniformly a happy one. I know that his is not the royal road to rapid acquisition, and that few men are likely to amass great wealth by quietly tilling the soil. I know, moreover, that what passes for farming among us is not so noble, so intellectual, so attractive, a pursuit as it might and should be--that most farmers might farm better and live to better purpose than they do. Of all the false teaching, I most condemn that which flatters farmers as though they were demigods and their calling the grandest and the happiest ever followed by mortals, when the hearer, unless very green, must feel that the speaker doesn't believe one word of all be utters; for, if he did, he would be farming, instead of living by some profession, and talking as though his auditors did not know wheat from chaff. I regard the Agriculture of this country as very far below the standard which, it should ere this have reached: I hold that the great mass of our cultivators might and should farm better than they do, and that better farming would render their sons better citizens and better men. If a single line of this little work should seem calculated to cajole its readers into self-complacency rather than instruct them, I beg them to believe that their impression wrongs my purpose. I am fully aware that others have treated my theme with fuller knowledge and far greater ability than I brought to its discussion. "Then why not leave them the field?" Simply because, when all have written who can elucidate my theme, at least three-fourths of those who ought to study and ponder it will not have read any treatise whatever upon Agriculture--will hardly have yet regarded it as a theme whereon books should be written and read. And, since there may be some who will read this treatise for its writer's sake--will read it when they could not be persuaded to do like honor to a more elaborate and erudite work--I have written in the hope of arousing in some breasts a spirit of inquiry with regard to Agriculture as an art based on Science--a spirit which, having been awakened, will not fall again into torpor, but which will lead on to the perusal and study of profounder and better books. In the foregoing essays, I have sought to establish the following propositions: