28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



To create the former, we should use our utmost endeavors to 

 hold out to manufactui'ers and capitalists, the superior advantages 

 we possess for manufacturing ; to show them that we were evi- 

 dently designed by nature to become a manufacturing State, and 

 to induce them to occupy and turn to good account some of our 

 numerous water-falls which are now unoccupied, or if occupied, 

 are of comparatively little advantage to the occupants or the 

 community. 



The proposed Aroostook Railroad would open a communication 

 into a fertile wheat growing country, and not only afford easy 

 transportation for those already settled, but be a means of reducing 

 the wilderness into fruitful fields, and do much towards enriching 

 the State by developing its agricultural capabilities. 



In connection with this topic, I would call the attention of farm- 

 ers to the resources which our State possesses for furnishing plant 

 food in the form of marine manures and more especially fish guano, 

 which is now about being manufactured in large quantities, and at 

 a moderate price, and which promises to be a valuable acquisition 

 to our hitherto limited supply of fertilizers. 



Mr. Wasson offered the following on 



The Influence of the Agricultural Press. 



Some fifty years ago, the first agricultural paper in this country 

 was started at Baltimore. The idea of teaching farmers anything 

 in that way, was hooted, as simply ridiculous. At the present 

 time when si.x.ty or seventy periodicals are devoted to farming, 

 when hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on these 

 publications, when the best talents practical and theoretical are 

 employed to make them instructive and useful, with too many the 

 idea is still simply ridiculous, and many more expounders in agri- 

 culture sympathize in harmony. 



Agriculture is eminently an experimental science. The farmer 

 needs the experience of others, together with his own, to establish 

 new facts. The result of his own observations, coinciding with 

 the observations of his neighbors, suggests new improvements. 

 But the farmer from the isolated nature of his vocation — being a 

 latge portion of his time alone in the field — has but little time and 

 less opportunity for social intercourse, and, by mere force of habit, 

 becomes, a kind of unsocial being. Having ears he hears not the 

 experience and suggestions of others, and to the improvements 



