50 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW- YORK 



Not only the official from the nobility, but the professional men, 

 the lawyer, the clergy, the physicians and the commercial men, 

 regarded the farmer as not of their set. True, the yeomanry 

 came forward with great alacrity to shed their blood and to pro- 

 vision the soldiery from their storehouses, to carry the country 

 through the struggles of the Revolution; yet as soon as indepen- 

 dence was achieved and a nationality established, the farmer, by 

 common consent, was permitted again to fall back into his former 

 position. He there continued for more than half a century, cul- 

 tivating his virgin fields in a downward way, knowing little of 

 science in any of its relations, and nothing of it in its connection 

 with the cultivation and treatment of the soil. The result was 

 that a state of entire exhaustion followed in many instances, and 

 great depreciation everywhere. 



Luther Tucker, in 1831, established the Genesee Farmer^ at 

 Rochester, which, from the labors of his own pen, and those of 

 many valuable correspondents, furnished a fund of valuable 

 agricultural instruction, and at the same time urged upon the 

 farmers the importance, indeed, the absolute necessity of an 

 improved state of husbandry to save their farms from entire 

 waste. The Ploughhoy had, before that, been published at 

 Albany, by Solomon South wick — a paper marked with the char- 

 acteristic genius and power of its editor. Judge Jesse Buel, of 

 Albany, in 1834, commenced the publication of The Cultivator^ 

 which, in his hands, as well as in the hands of his successors 

 down to this time, has shed so much light upon the Agriculture 

 of this State and of all the States in the Union. 



That he might teach by practice as well as by precept, Judge 

 Buel purchased a small tract of land for a farm on the confines 

 of what were then called the " Sand Barrens," west of Albany, 

 and there very successfully showed by experiment, that by 

 improved modes of cultivation, lands which had been thought 

 almost valueless, could be made highly productive, and the culti- 

 vation at the same time be made remunerative. He gave the 

 public the benefit of his experiments through the columns of 

 his paper. 



The Legislature, in 1832, incorporated "The New- York State 

 Agricultural Society,*' to continue for the term of twenty 3'ears, 

 with power to take and hold real and personal property; but lest 



