AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 257 



of to-day, as well as developing new fertility in the ancient 

 soil. Man "by searching" has found out various means to 

 accelerate and intensify this restoration and elaboration of 

 fertility, and that people among whom the quest of better, 

 cheaper, and more energetic means of heightening the pro- 

 ductive power of the soil, and of best economizing that 

 already at disposal, has been most successfully prosecuted, is 

 the people that will lead in the march of civilization, and 

 will impress its language, its manners, and its morals on the 

 world. 



Our agriculture has two very prominent wants. The one 

 is a more universal acquaintance with and practice of what 

 has already been learned, and the other is the learning of 

 many things now unknown, which we feel important to un- 

 derstand — the settlement of much discussed questions that 

 vex and baffle us in laying our plans, and embarrass our 

 practice — the discovery of new facts that shall enlarge and 

 improve our systems of farming. Every farmer remembers 

 that his successes have been reached by a series of discov- 

 eries on his part. He can remember when he followed this 

 and that practice, which he has come to see are defective and 

 injurious, and therefore has abandoned — that he was once 

 ignorant of most useful operations, resources, and methods, 

 which, one by one have been revealed to him, either by con- 

 versation, reading, Ansiting some neighbor, near or remote, 

 or by reflection and observation on his own premises. 



Every New England farmer who maintains or increases the 

 productiveness of his land under the changed circumstances 

 of recent years, has done it by using knowledge Avhich his 

 forefathers did not possess or did not use, and no such farmer 

 would willingly part with the knowledge thus gained. He 

 would not part with it because there is advantage in it, 

 money in it. He would not part with it because it has been 

 a pleasure to acquire, and is a pleasure to possess and to com- - 

 municate, and because he feels that he himself has grown and : 

 ripened by the gain of this knowledge. It has become a part 

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