harmoniously, and simultaneously. This great eternal lav of nature is ruling 

 the growth and life of all around us. This law -will act beneficially with 

 man, encouraging and blessing his labor and care, or if treated with defiance 

 and contempt, it visits him with fearful retribution. Fortune and luck smile 

 upon the successful, say the mole-eyed. The only fortune and the only luck 

 is obedience to this iron law. But to bring out the grand harmonious result, 

 so grateful to the eye, so gratifying to the pride, so profitable to the purse, 

 assiduous, constant, unremitting attention is necessary. A great sculptor had 

 spent months on a work of art after it seemed to be finished. He had altered 

 a feature here, a muscle there, reduced a fulness in one place, had re-touched 

 the ear, the lip and the eyelid. A visitor jeered him on the waste of so much 

 time on trifles. " It is true," said he, "that I have busied myself on trifles ; 

 but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." Let farmers heed the 

 moral. 



Cost may at first seem to be an objection. It soon ceases to be. The man 

 who practices on the principle of propagating from the best of seed and the 

 best of stock, soon perceives a great increase in the per centage of profit. He 

 will soon learn that he loses less among cattle by disease and accident, less 

 among crops by blight and deterioration. Such a farmer never needs to vex 

 and worry himself about a market for his surplus. His produce and stock 

 are always sought after. It is a certain and positive value, will always com- 

 mand the highest price, and always pay his debts. His lobor all counts, his 

 labor is all productive. 



What I have here said belongs to the art of agriculture. There is an art of 

 agriculture, and a science of agriculture. The art consists in culture, in 

 handicraft, skill in known processes, in ploughing, ditching, and harvesting. 

 You may understand the art well. You may deem yourself perfect in it, may 

 have a brawny arm and an intelligent head, but I doubt whether you under- 

 stand the whole art. The first time you want a piece of ditching done, just 

 hire a professional English ditcher ; he will ditch two yards to your one, and 

 will do it neater, straiter, handsomer, than you can, and be less fatigued at 

 night than you are. At night you have learned a lesson from a clod-hopper. 

 Two years since a gentleman from a neighboring county went to the New 

 York State Fair. He considered himself an adept in farming. To him a 

 plough, however, was a plough. He witnessed the work of the most improved 

 ploughs and purchased two, expressly designed and calculated for such work 

 as he wished to perform. He has since informed me that he would not part 

 with them and resume the use of the old ploughs for one hundred dollars per 

 annum. Yet ploughing was just the part of his business he thought he un- 

 derstood. Though his plough was a good plough, the best plough was much 

 better. He learned something in the art of agriculture. Gen. Cass, in his late 

 address at the State Fair, alluded to the fact that when Elisha was taken from 

 the plough and called to a higher trust, ho left twelve yoke of oxen in the fur- 

 row, It is only by comparing the art of agriculture as it existed three thou- 

 sand years ago, that we can appreciate the progress of mankind. How mise- 

 rably feeble must have been the stock, how clumsy and wretched the plough. 



