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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on the reform of our architecture. It is 

 hardly too much to ask that writers on the 

 state of modern architecture will, before 

 pronouncing absolute condemnation, make 

 the acquaintance of our leading architects, 

 visit their offices, study their methods, fa- 

 miliarize themselves with the great difficul- 

 ties and amazing complications of the archi- 

 tectural problem, and carefully examine the 

 effort? which these men are making for its 

 satisfactory solution. 



Yours, etc., A. D. F. Hamlin, 



Adjunct Professor of Architecture, 



School of Mines, Columbia College. 

 New Yobk, December 17, 1890. 



NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE. 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



Sir : I have just been reading Prof. Cur- 

 rier's article on The Decline of Rural New 

 England. It does not in any degree satisfy 

 me as an exposition of things as they are. 

 Like him, I was born close to the soil ; like 

 him, I have been and am a student ; but, un- 

 like him, I am now, and have been for most 

 of my life, a practical fanner. My diagnosis 

 of the case is (consequently) quite different. 

 I agree with him only in thinking that our 

 tariff laws have generally done the farmer 

 more harm than good. He utterly ignores 

 the chief of all the reasons why farming has 

 declined, so far as a decline can be noted. 

 This decline is in the hill-farms chiefly, and 

 it has been coincident with the opening up 

 of Western free lands. But it has also been 

 coincident with a great decline in the fertil- 

 ity of those farms, with no corresponding 

 increase among the farmers of knowledge 

 how to prevent such decline, or how to re- 

 store lost fertility. 



The comfort and prosperity of the ear- 

 lier generations of our farmers are exagger- 

 ated. There was as much debt, as little gen- 

 eral advance, and very much more vice 

 among New England farmers fifty years ago 

 than now. Prof. Currier makes the common 

 mistake of comparing the valley farmers of 

 fifty years ago with the hill farmers of the 

 present day. By the enforcement of pro- 

 hibitory laws, and the general reprobation 

 of intemperance in the rural districts of 

 New England, the moral condition of the 

 hill farmers has been, on the whole, much 

 improved, and their manner of life their 

 civilization much advanced. But, in the 

 mean time, for lack of instruction, their 

 lands have become infertile to the degree 

 that they fail to give them a good living ; 

 while free farms in the West have been 

 made so cheaply accessible to them that they 

 have sold out and gone away. This is the 

 whole explanation of what has been and is 

 called the " decline of New England farm- 

 ing." The census does not reveal any real 

 decline. The value of the agricultural prod- 

 ucts of New England is still as large, per 



acre and per man ; while compared with 

 other sections New England yet stands with 

 the best States, even without allowance for 

 the natural inferiority of much of her soil. 

 " Plenty of food, plenty of children." As 

 the fertility of the hill-farms disappeared, so 

 came the decline in the size of the families 

 on them. Is this only a coincidence? I 

 think not ; although I admit an equal decline 

 elsewhere, from different causes. 



If religion has declined among our peo- 

 ple, there has been no accompanying decline 

 of morality. The ministers have lost much 

 of their influence, chiefly because they have 

 been educated away from the people. In 

 my youth the rural ministers were among 

 the best farmers we had. Now, I do not 

 know in a whole county a minister who takes 

 any interest in agriculture. A farming min- 

 istry would be a great help to New England 

 agriculture, and equally to moral social life. 

 But our classical schools and colleges all 

 educate away from the farm and from sym- 

 pathy with the plain people. Our rural min- 

 isters are almost to a man the outspoken 

 foes of science, as being destructive to the 

 dogmas upon which their religious systems 

 are built. 



The hill - farms in New England are 

 " played out." Many of them are going 

 back to forest, which is perhaps their best 

 use. But one has only to take a carriage 

 trip through our river valleys to see abun- 

 dant signs of agricultural progress and pros- 

 perity. Not that even our valley farmers 

 have not their " ups and downs " their 

 years of bad as well as of good times but 

 they and their families live better, have 

 more, and enjoy more, much more, than did 

 their fathers and grandfathers. They are 

 better educated ; and many of them, and of 

 their families, are careful readers and stu- 

 dents of their art, as well as interested in 

 the general progress of the world. Their 

 great need is for better schools, in which 

 scientific instruction should have the first 

 place. The old literary methods, though 

 still supported by the college and seminary 

 bred clergy, are obsolete, useless, and preju- 

 dicial to the advance of true civilization and 

 the industrial arts, especially the art of agri- 

 culture. T. H. Hoskins. 

 Newport, Vt., January 10, 1891. 



EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS. 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 

 Sir : Some of the difficulties that trouble 



your correspondent K , in regard to 



evolutionary ethics, will, I think, disappear 

 by enlarging his conception of happiness so 

 as to include the happiness of society as 

 well as that of the individual. In the long 

 run, and in the main, these two coincide ; 

 but it is evident that with our present im- 

 perfect moral development there must arise 

 many instances where the welfare of so- 

 ciety runs counter to the happiness of the 



