And, whatever may be his judgment on this slight work, I _know_ that, if I could have perused one of like tenor half a century ago, when I was a patient worker and an eager reader in my father's humble home, my subsequent career would have been less anxious and my labors less exhausting than they have been. Could I then have caught but a glimpse of the beneficent possibilities of a farmer's life--could I have realized that he is habitually (even though blindly) dealing with problems which require and reward the amplest knowledge of Nature's laws, the fullest command of science, the noblest efforts of the human intellect, I should have since pursued the peaceful, unobtrusive round of an enthusiastic and devoted, even though not an eminent or fortunate, tiller of the soil. Even the little that is unfolded in the ensuing pages would have sufficed to give me a far larger, truer, nobler conception of what the farmer of moderate means might and should be, than I then attained. I needed to realize that observation and reflection, study and mental acquisition, are as essential and as serviceable in his pursuit as in others, and that no man can have acquired so much general knowledge that a farmer's exigencies will not afford scope and use for it all. I abandoned the farm, because I fancied that I had already perceived, if I had not as yet clearly comprehended, all there was in the farmer's calling; whereas, I had not really learned much more of it than a good plow-horse ought to understand. And, though great progress has been made since then, there are still thousands of boys, in this enlightened age and conceited generation, who have scarcely a more adequate and just conception of agriculture than I then had. If I could hope to reach even one in every hundred of this class, and induce him to ponder, impartially, the contents of this slight volume, I know that I shall not have written it in vain.