STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 65 



of the area with this vast water front is one symmetrical domain, by- 

 reason of the mountains that uprear their five hundred miles of jagged 

 whiteness in its background ; the rivers that flow from the northward 

 and the southward, fed from those snowy springs, to unite in the centre 

 of the State; and the Bay that receives their volume, rivalling in its con- 

 formation the Bay of Naples. Where else has the Almighty delivered 

 to half a million of people such a line of eternal snow looking down upon 

 such opulent plains ? Where else such a fellowship of temperate and 

 tropic climates ? Where else such rainless summers, which turn droughts 

 into harvests? Where else gold in the rocks, and, bending over the 

 mills that crush them, peaches that mock the apples of gold in the Gar- 

 den of the Hesperides ? Where else such sweeps of wheat, sueh armies 

 of noble cattle on a thousand hills, such bloom of vine}^ards ; and beneath 

 all, such variety of mineral wealth, which only centuries to come can tap 

 and drain ? Where else has the Almighty connected such social bless- 

 ings with material good — freedom, intelligence, schools, multiplying 

 churches, and loyalty — deliberate-principled, unconditional, invincible 

 loyalt} 7 to the Government, and the policy, the freest, the noblest, the 

 worthiest beneath the sun ? 



I do not say this, gentlemen, in boasting. It is only the honest gen- 

 eralization of the map of California, and of the facts which your exhibi- 

 tion presents to our eyes this week. In privilege of position, and in 

 regard to resources and the future, the State of California, in the Amer- 

 ican Bepublic, is the most favored spot which this globe turns to the sun. 



And it is not the spirit of boasting which the facts, properly appre- 

 ciated, will awaken. This soil and these treasures are a trust. They 

 are offered to us as the condition of stable wealth and a rich civilization. 

 But they do not pledge and guarantee that wealth and civilization. Our 

 mineral treasures, if we export them to pay for imported necessities and 

 luxuries of existence, will give fortune to the brokers that manage the 

 transfer, but will not enrich the State. Civilization will shrivel around 

 the very sources of gold. And if we hoard the gold itself, it will not 

 enrich us. Our prosperity and progress will depend on the variety of 

 industrial interests developed in the State, so that a large percentage of 

 our bullion shall be kept in motion here, and the soil retain its present 

 fertility and bounty. 



Do you ask now how the fertility of the soil is or can be affected by 

 variety of industry in a State? It is of the last necessity that every 

 prominent agriculturist and every man of influence in the policy of a 

 rising State should see the connection, and act upon it, in order to be- 

 friend civilization. 



Nothing is so remarkable, perhaps, in the advance of knowledge 

 within this century, as the new light thrown upon the farmer's duty and 

 office. All labor has risen in dignity and value; but the science of the 

 last fifty years has raised the culture of the soil into the most noble of 

 the arts to which man can devote himself — the one requiring the most 

 varied knowledge, and the one which is most difficult to keep, year in 

 and year out, at a very high level of success. To plant a grain of wheat, 

 and see it bring forth thirty or sixty fold, seems a very simple thing. 

 How, in such a business as that, is there room for a high display of intel-^ 

 Iigence ? How can an}' body say that the planting of a wheat field, and 

 the reaping of it, is a high and difficult art ? But begin to study the re- 

 lations of one wheat blade to the forces and laws of nature, and see 



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