196 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW- YORK 



ered truth, and there is little danger of coming to the end. It is 

 hardly possible that the ratio of discovery should be diminished ^ 

 unless by sheer laziness on the part of scientific men; and this 

 seems hardly probable at present. That there are plenty of dis- 

 coveries to be made, that they will be made, that important appli- 

 cations will be made to all the industrial arts, and to none more 

 than agriculture, may be set down as certain. Science will bless 

 the farmer who cherishes her aid. She will go further : she will 

 fulfil the christian injunction — will bless those who curse her. 

 The farmer that rails at her teachings, will be reaping better har- 

 vests for them ten years hence. He is reaping better now even, 

 though he may not know it; and he is reaping them more expe- 

 ditious and with less exhausting labor. The farmer, of all others, 

 should not undervalue science. Let him look at the discoveries 

 she has achieved for agriculture, at the ouAvard progress which 

 her past achievments guaranty for the future, at the implements 

 which, in conjunction with mechanic art, she has put into his 

 hand, and see if he does not sow and mow, and reap and thrash, 

 and perform almost every labor of the farm more easily for what 

 she has done. 



When the discoverer and the inventor, the mechanic and the 

 farmer, with an enlightened faith in each other, each exercising 

 a due respect for the parts which the others are to enact, shall 

 work together for the advancement of the greatest art, more than 

 has yet been dreamed of will be achieved. Since the days of 

 scratching wheat into the ground with a crooked stick, of reaping 

 it little by little, with a harsh edged knife, of thrashing it on 

 hardened soil by ox hoofs, of grinding it by hand between two 

 stones, and of baking it in hot embers, or in an oven excavated 

 in the ground, great improvements have been made, but greater 

 are to he made, if faith in science, in art, in human progress, is 

 not altogether vain. There was a time when the sickle took the 

 place of some inferior implement, perhaps of a straight knife. 

 It would have been silly then to suppose that a better reaper 

 would never be invented. It would be equally silly now to 

 despair of a better machine than any yet in use for the same 

 purpose. 'Some patriarch, it may have been Abraham, or a cotem- 

 porary, invented a rude sledge to be drawn over the wheat by 

 oxen, as a thrashing machine. He and his neighbors had little 



