We insist, therefore, that the successful farmer must be a specialist. He must devote his time to special more than to general farm work. You ask me to outline in detail the idea thus advanced. You somewhat question its practicability. To attempt it might lead to endless discussion, but let us reduce to example. Farmer A. raises cattle, hogs, and sheep for breeding purposes, devotes some attention to fine horses, and keeps thirty-six cows for dairy purposes. Farmer B. devotes his entire attention to dairying and has invested in dairy cows as much money as A. has in all his stock. Is it not evident that though each farmer began life the same year, the latter man will make the most money, providing the section he is in demands dairy work? It seems to me so. And if we further place limit on the dairyman's work, we should say he can not afford, with fifty or seventy-five cows, to give as much attention to the manufacture of cheese and butter as that work necessarily demands. Even though he employs a specialist in creamery work, he himself must be a specialist to some extent. We say to investing farmers do not put $500 into horses, $500 into fine cattle, and $500 into swine, but concentrate on one class of stock, and give that your time.
J.N. MUNCEY, Asst. Ag. Expts. Ag. Col., Ames, Iowa.
A respectable looking, middle-aged gentleman called upon me not long since and told me he was a resident of an interior city of some eight or ten thousand inhabitants, and at a recent public meeting had been appointed chairman of a committee on the improvement of a small park, which it was thought might be made an attractive ornamental feature of the town.
On further inquiry I learned that the proposed park was simply a public square with a street on each of its four sides, on which fronted the principal public buildings, stores, etc. It was a dead level, with no natural features of any kind to suggest the manner of its arrangement, but they thought it might be made to add to the beauty of the town, and he had called to ask my advice in regard to it.
As the arrangement of such areas had occupied my thoughts a good deal in a general way, it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to ventilate some opinions I had formed in regard to prevalent errors in their management, and accordingly I addressed him substantially as follows: