136 TRANSACTIONS OP THE 



Annual ADDRESS. 



The Spirit of the Age and Its Requirements. 



ANNUAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE PAVILION, THURSDAY EVENING, SEP- 

 TEMBER 13, 1883, BY HON. IRVING M. SCOTT, OF SAN FRANCISCO. 



Mr. President and Directors, Ladies and Gentlemen: The 

 world has had its golden and silver, its brazen and iron ages; it has 

 also had its fictitious, metaphysical, and positive ages. It is our for- 

 tune to live in the positive or scientific, the spirit of which is progress, 

 progress, progress. 



Progress is stamped on the brow of every trade, profession, and 

 industry. It is seen in the manifold manufactories of the world, on 

 the broad fields of agriculture, in the rich merchantmen, steam and 

 sail, which infest every sea. We see it in our public schools, the nurs- 

 eries of civilization and the bulwarks of civil liberty, the adornment 

 of our times, and the incalculable blessing to our race. We see it in 

 the happy homes as numerous as the stars that smile above them — at 

 home, abroad, wherever we go. It is in the age; it is in us and of us — 

 impelling us on. 



Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, the trades, and the arts and 

 sciences are so intimately blended that the discussion of anj^ one of 

 them, includes in some degree the discussion of all. My purpose is 

 to discuss agriculture, with respect to the status it has held in the 

 affairs of the world, and with respect to the requirements of the age 

 in which we live. The origin of agriculture precedes all historic 

 record, and its locality is not known. It is quite certain that it did 

 not precede the dawn of civilization. For tilling the soil presup- 

 poses a security of rights, beyond the restraints imposed by absolute 

 savage life ; it was the offspring of necessity ; for a man in savage 

 life is not given to labor, nor to store up wealth in excess of his 

 immediate wants. He turns not to cultivating the field, nor to toil, 

 so long as bountiful nature gives him fruit, seed, nuts, roots, game, and 

 fish upon which to subsist. These failing, he was compelled to sup- 

 plement the gifts of nature, and to this end his attention was first 

 directed to domesticating the horse, cow, sheep, hog, etc., to use 

 when necessity should require them, and thus he became a shepherd. 

 The next suppletory act was to plant seed, by causing his cattle to 

 tread it into soft ground. When the demand upon his energies 

 became too great, or the soil too obstinate to admit of this primitive 

 method, genius came to his aid and invented the plow — an indispen- 



