ITS VALUE, CULTURE, AND USES. BY EDWARD ENFIELD. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 1866. 73191 M2E5 ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 13091 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. TO THE EDITORS AND LEADING WRITERS OF THE AGRICULTURAL PRESS. As a feeble tribute of admiration, Gentlemen, for your valuable services in advancing the great farming interest of our country, the author begs leave to inscribe to you this humble effort. Agriculture is the acknowledged basis of our national growth and prosperity. It has contributed, more than any other cause, to make our country what it is, and is destined to be equally instrumental hereafter in making it all that it promises to be. But while we all perceive and readily acknowledge the great national importance of this branch of industry, should we not equally recognize the vast and beneficent influence exerted by the class of writers I am addressing?-a class, numerically small but influentially potent, who, by advancing our agriculture, have contributed more to develop our material wealth and power than any other equal number of men in the country. No man who has paid any attention to the progress of American husbandry during the last few years, and to the direct influence exerted upon it by the class of periodicals especially devoted to it, can fail to realize how much the country is indebted to the conductors and writers of such journals. Wherever these sheets have penetrated the rural districts, the effect has been immediately obvious, in the ameliorated condition of the soil, in the improved quality and augmented quantity of farming products, and in the general thriftiness, the social and moral advancement of the farming population. |