STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 17 



the mere workinp^ of the farm, and the thousand miracles of beauty with 

 which it enables us to adorn the garden, it greatly enlarges upon those 

 lessons of tradition and experience by which we appropriate a soil pos- 

 sessed of certain cardinal qualities to the growing of a particular family 

 of crops, and feed domestic animals with respect to their kind, age, and 

 particular uses. 



Agricultural science, while it cannot unveil its arcana to the common 

 eye, nevertheless enforces three great precepts, which the humblest 

 minds can comprehend and apply : 



First — Plough deep, and in season; 



Second — Return to the soil, in the form of poudrette, stable, bone, and 

 bird manures, a generous equivalent for all the plant-food taken from it; 



Third — Pulverize thoroughly and often. 



It will be conceded that the position, climate, soil, and government of 

 the United States offer encouragements to agriculture, such as have never 

 existed elsewhere on so grand a scale. A doubt is seriously expressed 

 by eminent writers whether the rankness of tropical vegetation and the 

 debilitation of tropical heats can ever be overcome. The rigors of the 

 far north present insuperable obstacles to varied tillage. Eut in our 

 happ3' case the very heart of the earth is given us, "to dress it and to 

 keep it." Our chaste scener}- far surpasses that of the rank, pestilent, 

 overburdened tropics; while the fruits of our zone are as superior, on 

 the whole, as the nectar of the gods to the logwood mixtures of the tap- 

 room. 



The breadth of n'cAv and rich soil, the ample protection of property, 

 the loiig period of internal quiet, the ownership in fee simple of the tilled 

 acres by those who till them, the generous siae of our farms, the low price 

 of the public domain, the rapid growth of cities and manufactures, the 

 vast improvement in means of transportation, all these have stimulated 

 the improvement of the productive power of labor b}^ means of machin- 

 ery. Hence, in the department of invention we surpass every other 

 people. 



The reaper, the mower, the thresher, the grist mill, the sulky-plough, 

 the corn husker, the corn sheller, the horse rake, and the horse fork, 

 have augmented man power tenfold within a few busy years. With a 

 little machine that costs sixty dollars, a man husks eight times as much 

 corn daily as by hand, while the husks are left butted and slitted for 

 mattresses, and worth, Mdicn baled for market, sixty dollars per ton. 

 The patent horse fork unloads a ton of hay in three minutes, the cool 

 and conif'ortable operator merely forcing home the implement with his 

 foot, and slippitig the spring-joint by means of a cord as large as a child's 

 finger. Travelling in Illinois in June, one ma}^ see a hundred farmers 

 driving across the glorious cornfields of that vast, fat, fathomless garden, 

 each in a serviceable looking spring seated sulky. A closer inspection 

 will discover two ploughshares, one for each side of the row, capable of 

 easy adjustment to turn inward or outward, as may be desired. Thus, 

 with a sturdy span of horses, the ploughman cultivates fifty acres with 

 ease and pleasure, in place of the tedious, dreaded fourteen acres of 

 other days. 



It is this superiority in the item of agricultural implements that has 

 enabled us to do the most wonderful thing in history. With more than 

 a third of our working force withdrawn, we have fed a vast army and 

 navy, supplied the sick and wounded with delicacies hitherto unknown 



