STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 197 



reason to presume that no further improvement would be made; 

 we, with the lights which science has since shed on the world, 

 have less for supposing that our best thrashing machines are the 

 ne plus ultra of improvement in that line. It would have been 

 no more foolish for the man who first placed his spade across a 

 wash tub and shelled an ear of corn on it, to have shut down the 

 gate against further improvement in that direction, than for us to 

 believe we have yet found the best possible corn-sheller. So of 

 other implements. We have twice as many reasons for believing 

 that ours can be improved upon, as the patriarchs had for 

 believing that theirs could. So also is it with the powers and 

 capabilities, which the Almighty has hidden among the recesses 

 of nature, and bids us hunt them out and make them do our work 

 for us. Our grandfathers might have believed that wind and 

 water were the best possible motive powers. We may believe 

 that steam is the best. But as they certainly would have been 

 mistaken in their opinion, so we way be in ours. A cheaper, 

 safer, and every way better motive power than steam may be 

 among the things yet to be discoverd. It is hardly possible that 

 better modes of applying power in aid of human labor should 

 not be hereafter invented. That improved modes of culture will 

 find their way into our fields is about as certain, as that the 

 present are superior to those of the dark ages. As regards science, 

 physics, mechanics and the application of these to useful pur- 

 poses, it is about as certain that the course will be onward, as that 

 the sun will rise and set. 



The soil will produce more and more. It will produce, not 

 without the farmer's care, watchfulness and labor, but with less 

 of that extremely severe labor, which tends to degrade, siiiij»Iy 

 because it works the body harder than is consistent with the 

 highest mental activity. Let it not be said that labor degrades 

 any one. Lalxjr is honorable in spite of all the fools, who have 

 tried to prove it otherwise. And yet, it must be confessed, that 

 too intense la)x)r, admitting of little or no mental exercise, keep- 

 ing the man too constantly jaded duwn even to think cleai'ly, to 

 say nothing of rending, does degrade, not in the sense of making 

 Due unworthy, but of makinc: him inferior to what he would 

 have been with less severe lalxtr, and inferior to others who 

 commenced life his e<iual8. There has always been a difficulty 



