INTRODUCTION. -^J 



farms and pleasant liomes Avhich you see around you have •within a very 

 few years been literally hewn out of the wilderness. 



Nature has dealt generously with this region, and although we are sub- 

 jected to some inconveniences, tliough our climate is somewhat stern, and 

 our winters considered long and cold, yet, when we compare these draw- 

 backs with many of the difficulties with which the farmers of the West 

 have to contend, we cannot help thinking that Maine is the best place for 

 Maine men, and that Aroostook holds out by far the best agricultural 

 inducements to the surplus population of the older counties. While we 

 are favored here with a rich and fertile soil, which in its natural state is 

 capable of producing generously, which we have but "to tickle with the 

 plow, and it will laugh with a harvest," we recognize the fact, that upon 

 us rests the duty and responsibility of keeping it as nature gave it to us, 

 and of transmitting it unexhausted to those who shall occupy it after we 

 are peacefully reposing in its bosom. In order to do this, we know that 

 we must make use of every means of advancement to a higher and more 

 Intelligent mode of cultivation ; and we recognize as one of those means 

 the sessions and discussions of this honorable Board, and the ideas which 

 are disseminated from this source among the farmers of our county and 

 State. And we are confident that much good will result to this section 

 from the present session of this Board, in awakening our fiirmers to a 

 sense of the need of more intelligent modes of culture, of a better knowl- 

 edge of their soil, and its requirements, and of a higher and more gen- 

 erous system of cultivation than we have ever befoi'e practiced. 



We hail it as one of the most encouraging signs of the times, that farm- 

 ers are awakening to a sense of the need of a better special education for 

 their calling, and that instead of the old hap-hazaixl method of farming 

 practiced by too many, and which deserves not the name of cultivation, 

 and which only served to prove that nature was so bountiful, and so lavish 

 of her gifts as to furnish man with a subsistence in spite of his efforts to 

 hinder her, is to be substituted a system of agriculture based upon sound 

 and practical principles, intelligently and generously applied. Agricul- 

 tural knowledge is being more generally diffused among the farmers of 

 our State than ever before. Our Agricultural College, yet in its infancy, 

 our State Board of Agriculture, true and faithful workers for the advance- 

 ment and elevation of the farming class, our county and local societies, 

 and last, but by no means least, our granges, established in nearly every 

 farming community, are all so many educators of our people, and so many 

 means of diffusing better and more advanced ideas relating to the farmer's 

 calling. One of the most fatal errors of our system of education, hereto- 

 fore, has been,* in my humble opinion, that we have paid so little attention 

 to the work of educating young men and young women to do something. 

 Our classical institutions and higher universities are all right and proper, 

 and I would be the last man to deny to any young man or woman the 

 means of a classical education, of the very highest order that he or she is 

 capable of receiving or appreciating. But it seems to me, that in our sys- 

 tem of education we have made too much a specialty of fitting students 



