206 Transactions of the 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



DELIVERED BEEORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, SEPTEM- 

 BER TWENTY-SECOND, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-ONE. 



By T. G. PHELPS. 



Mr. President, Members of the State Agricultural Society, and Ladies and 

 Gentlemen : 



Another year, with its changing seasons of seed time, flowers and 

 harvest, has rolled its busy round, and we have met together again for the 

 annual disj)lay of the products of our skill and labor, that each may 

 learn from all the others whatever experience has taught, or skill or 

 inventive genius may have developed during the year, which may he of 

 general or partial utility in the future, whether it be in the cultivation 

 of the soil, the enlarging of the variety of our marketable crops, the 

 adaptation to our wants of new or better perfected labor saving machin- 

 ery, or in the inrprovement of our herds and folds. How much we learn 

 from each other from these annual convocations is shown by the great 

 variet} 7 and fine quality of the exhibit here made of the productions of 

 the farm, the orchard, the vineyard, and by the great variety and supe- 

 rior quality of the thoroughbred and judiciously graded domestic ani- 

 mals I have seen in your stalls, and the quantity of meritorious labor 

 saving machinery on exhibition here, on which ingenuity seems to have 

 exhausted skill, and perfection in many instances to have been reached. 



What kind of success would that husbandman meet with who would 

 confine himself to the use of the very best appliances of twenty-five 

 years ago? Plowing with a cast iron plow of inferior mold, reaping 

 with a sickle, and thrashing with a flail? In that brief period Ave have 

 passed from the cast iron plow to the steel gang, from the sickle to the 

 header, and from the flail to the steam power and horse forks. The next 

 advanced step will be to steam plows and steam harvesters. Eminent 

 success in the present advanced and rapidly advancing age can only be 

 obtained by the farmer by raising the best crops, the most of them, and 

 at the lowest cost, Avithout deterioration of his soil — his future reliance 

 as the source of his future productions. Here we learn from each 

 other's experience how to attain the former and aA'oid the latter. 



These annual gatherings are not only necessary to the prosperity of 

 individuals, but equally so to the prosperity of communities and States. 

 In our agricultural productions, we are, in this age of steamboats and 

 railroads, in open competition Avith the civilized world. AVe need, there- 

 fore, the most approved appliances of husbandry and the ripest experience 



