STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. G9 



if we do not try to pass it ovei' to our children with but little reduction 

 of its vitalit} 7 , we are simply squandering our capital in our great harvests 

 now, and mortgaging also the patrimony of posterity. 



And in order to keep the soil rich, we need varied industry in our 

 State. Very distant markets for grain, and beef, and wool, though the 

 prices may enrich the farmers and merchants of the first twenty years, 

 will inevitably impoverish the bank which pays out its guineas in the 

 disguise of corn and cattle. The far distant market allows no return of 

 food to the hungry globe. To keep up the agricultural opulence of a 

 State, there must be active home markets — markets demanding a large 

 variety of farm produce — centres of cunning industry, from the waste 

 and leavings of whose consumption the return of needed material may 

 be quickly made to the fields. The only safe foreign market, in the long- 

 run, is that which takes from a State the natural excess of its production 

 after the main interests and activities of civilized industry are supplied 

 on its own soil. And no foreign market is safe if there is not rigid 

 economy of all the native sewerage, and, beyond that, an import of some 

 concentrated manure to renew to the ground the organic elements ex- 

 ported from the farms. 



Here is the reason why agriculture cannot be wise and perfect without 

 a just organization of society. A savage tribe on the wealthiest land 

 will wring out only a squalid subsistence. Some wisdom in tillage is 

 necessary to start civilization ; and then proper diversity of industry 

 and activity of movement in civilization itself are essential, that there 

 may be a quick absorption of a large percentage of natural products, 

 and a sure return of prolific elements to the strained bounty of the 

 fields. 



The difficulty we meet in keeping agriculture at a high and affluent 

 level is an index of its dignity. The Creator shows us thus that it is the 

 crowning triumph of human genius and of social organization, as well as 

 the foundation interest of man. Be proud of your office and position, 

 farmers of California ! Accept your duty with a sense of its wide rela- 

 tions and its nobleness. God makes no perfect apple. He makes the 

 possibility of it, wdiispers the dream of it into some ambitious farmer's 

 mind, and lends him the forces of Omnipotence to shape and fill it. He 

 produces no short-horned Durham, no high-blood racers, no exquisite Suf- 

 folk pigling, no Merino sheep. He rears the coarser blood and bones, 

 the framework of these admirable victories in flesh and sinew, and tempts 

 the farmer on to conjure them into reality and thus adorn the world. 

 He spreads no prairies- that will glow with golden wheat forever, but 

 through science shows the farmer how to renew the wasting treasury of 

 the soil, that he may learn to build up society in learning how to rejuve- 

 nate his land. 



Keep in view this co-operation of 3 r our calling with the thought and 

 art of Omniscience, the crowning glory of the farmer's work. Study to 

 understand more and more, every year, of the principles that lie at the 

 base of your business. Be sure that you subscribe for the agricultural 

 journals of the State you live in. The only way to be sure, that I can 

 suggest, is to look carefull} T , when you know that } t ou are wide awake, 

 at the receipted bill. Buy such books as that most suggestive and able 

 volume, lately printed in America, and on sale in California, " The Natu- 

 ral Laws of Husbandry," by the German Professor, Liebig. It is worth 

 a good deal more than its weight in gold to every large farmer — so that 

 you will make a very handsome sum in buying it. It will pay better 

 than average " feet." Study carefully the published statistics of the dis- 



