American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

AMERICAN A GRICUL TURE.
to reject those which, tho within the "limit of tolerance," as
the money-writers say, are yet on the whole, and in the long-run,
not profitable, demands long, careful, and elaborate experimentation. Beyond this is the selection of varieties within the retained species, in which alone may reside the possibilities of
success or failure; the fortunate choice of varieties, among the
almost indefinite number, often making all the difference between profit and no profit.
To do this work satisfactorily requires great mental enterprise and what we may call curiosity, a natural delight in experimentation, a ready apprehension combined with persistency,
in due measure, and with a sound judgment. To do this work
both well and quickly, being neither slow in testing new and
promising subjects, nor easily discouraged by the accidents
which beset initiation and experiment, nor yet reluctant in
drawing the proper inference from failure, would task the intellectual powers of any race of men.
In Europe the knowledge of soils and of climate, on which
the cultivation of large estates or personal properties is based, is
the accumulation of hundreds of years of experience. In the
United States the course of settlement has called upon our
people to occupy virgin territory as extensive as Switzerland,
as England, as Italy, and latterly as France or Germany, every
ten years. And it has been in meeting the necessity of a rapid,
rough-and-ready reconnoissance of new soils under varying climatic conditions that the character of our cultivating class, as
indicated under the previous title, has come most strikingly into
play.
During the colonial period the work of experiment had so
far advanced that every crop but one (sorghum) now recognized
in the official agricultural statistics of the country was cultivated
within the region east of the Alleghanies. In the long course
of experiment which had resulted in the naturalization of the
crops now so well known in New England, the following had,
according to Prof. Brewer, been tried and rejected from our
agriculture, viz., hemp, indigo, rice, cotton, madder, millet, spelt,
lentils, and lucern.
But while so much of the adaptations of our general climate
to agriculture had been thus early mastered, much in the way
255