STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 189 



his family must have; fifteen or twenty pounclSj for instance, of 

 ahnost any kind of meat, for a yard of cotton cloth, that we 

 would not now pay three cents for. What wonder is it that the 

 farmers of that day failed to improve their lands, that they suf- 

 fered their houses to become brown and decayed over their heads, 

 that they themselves became dull, discouraged, vegetative, rather 

 than active beings'? The only wonder is that they did not lie 

 down in the furrow and refuse to rise. The last thing we should 

 do is to blame them. 



As soon as other employments were opened, the more enter- 

 prising of the farmers' sons rushed into them. This was well, 

 because it gave those who remained a few customers. Eut there 

 was this evil about it : the less stirring and enterprising were left 

 on the farm; and this made it a slower process for agriculture to 

 emerge from its then low condition. It has emerged, nevertheless. 

 Much is due, at least ten times more than the world will ever 

 give credit for, to the efforts of the pioneers in agricultural 

 imj^rovements, such men as Col. Pickering of Massachusetts, and 

 Col. Skinner of Maryland. By most farmers their writings were 

 ridiculed. They persevered notwithstanding, and the good effects 

 of their labors have been seen since their death, if they were not 

 before. There is a tendency in farmers to look with suspicion at 

 the application of science to their employment; and this tendency 

 is stronger in proportion as they are ignorant. It gives Avay as 

 intelligence increases. There are now a hundred farmers who 

 realize that there is yet something to be learned about agricul- 

 ture, to where there was one fifty years ago. Then, the odium of 

 reading an agricultural book was greater than men of no more 

 than ordinary btickbone could bear. Now, the earnest writer has 

 earnest, sympatliizing readers, ready to admit that there may be 

 improvements in farm management, and desirous of adopting 

 tliem as soon as they approve themselves to a sound judgment; 

 and most farmers are now willing that their neighbors should 

 study agriculture as well i\s practice it — will not expend all their 

 wit against tlieni, if fuund witli agricultural books and ]>a])ers in 

 their houses, nor insist that (juite all the money expended for such 

 things is thrown away; and, wluit is very significant, will look 

 over the fence and imitate the imj^nA'ed processes of their 

 reading neighbors, — the book farmers, as many still facetiously 



