Says Maxwell’s Talisman: “The greatest good that can be done to the American farmer to-day is to teach him to make the greatest possible profit from the smallest tract of land from which a family can be supported in comfort.  A great influence operating to-day against keeping the boys in the country is that the boy does not have money enough to buy a farm.  It is unfortunately true that in some places there is a trend in the direction of absorbing farms into still larger farms with a consequent diminution of population, as in Iowa and other sections.  The remedy for this is to demonstrate that if the value is in the boy rather than in the farm, and the boy is taught intensive, diversified, scientific farming, a good living with a surplus profit that will provide amply for old age, may be made from a comparatively small tract of land.  The tract may be, say, ten acres, with ample cultivation, irrigation, and fertilization, or even without irrigation because a hoe and a cultivator in the hands of a scientific farmer may bring as good and better results in providing moisture for growing plants as can be had from a ditch and unlimited water in the hands of an ignorant farmer.”

The field of discovery is always limitless, and it is to those boys or girls who devote their attention to this that the greatest return will come.  “What a fine thing it would be to find even one plant free from rust in the midst of a rusted field.  It would mean a rust-resistant plant.  Its off-spring would probably be also rust resistant.  If you should ever find such a plant, be sure to save its seed and plant in a plot by itself.  The next year again save seed from those plants least rusted.  Possibly you can develop a rust proof race of wheat!  Keep your eyes open.” ("Agriculture for Beginners,” by Burkett, Stevens, and Hill, pages 76-78.) So you may pluck gain out of loss.

If you want to do experiments, the influence of ether on plants is one new and wonderful field.  It seems to induce artificial rest, so that lilacs, for instance, can be made to bloom twice by a treatment, the last time near Christmas.

E. V. Wilcox says in Farming that in 1899 a small quantity of durum or macaroni wheat was introduced into this country for trial.  It was found profitable in localities where there was too little rain for ordinary wheat.  Six years later, 20,000,000 bushels per year of the wheat was grown in the United States.  Its production has increased greatly every season and has added materially to the total of the wheat crop..  Thorough fall cultivation has been found to increase the yield, and in some parts of the wheat belt one in five of tile farmers has already adopted the practice.  In certain states where manuring has been thought unnecessary, experiments have demonstrated that the yield may be be increased 60 per cent by this simple practice.  The wheat production of Nebraska was increased more than 10,000,000 bushels by the introduction of a hardy strain of Turkey red wheat.  Swedish select oats in Wisconsin have greatly augmented the oat yield of the state.  In 1899 six pounds of the seed was brought to the state and from this small beginning a crop of 9,000,000 bushels was harvested five years later.