84 N. H. STATE AGRICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



ation, deference, and respect as in the United States, and 

 I believe their exemption from field labor, and their con- 

 sequent disconnection from all the grosser and more repul- 

 sive cares and toils of husbandry, has much to do in fixing 

 the social position they so ■well merit, and happily for the 

 true interests of our own sex, so fully enjoy, throughout the 

 United States. 



Let me now indicate one or two points in which our 

 rural economy may be profited by availing ourselves of 

 the advancement of natural science. 



The cflbrts of agriculturists have been hitherto mainly 

 directed to the attaining of the greatest quantity of pro- 

 duce, without sufficiently inquiring whether the very means 

 employed to stijnulate extraordinary fertility did not de- 

 teriorate the quality, in nearly as great a proportion aa 

 they augmented the yield. There are some facts connected 

 witli this question wliich are familiar to every one. Our 

 native samples which are gathered for medicinal purposes 

 are much more efficient and beneficial in their action, when 

 growing untilled on the barren soils where nature usually 

 sows them, than in the rank and vigorous form they assume 

 when transplanted to the too luxuriant soil of our gardens. 

 So the pasturage and the liay-crop are so much more highly 

 flavored in dry, tlian in moist and fruitful, seasons, that 

 their superior nutritiousness seems sometimes quite to 

 compensate for their diminished quantity. In both these 

 cases, tlie facts are easily tested by simple experiment j but 

 this becomes more difficult, when we attempt a comparison 

 between differeiit kinds or qualities of any of the grains 

 employed as food for man. The problem is here too com- 

 plicated to be solved by ordinary observation, because, in 

 countries where any enliglitcned interest is felt in such 

 questions, men are seldom confined to any one article, or 

 any specific and minutely ascertained quantity, of diet. 

 For determining the nutritive properties of our aliments 

 then, we must have recourse to chemical analysis, com- 



