58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



hardy sons to cultivate and improve her own soil, tlian to send them to the 

 far west, to improve other States and Territories, and far more conducive, both 

 to the physical and moral welfare of the young men." 



Mark Dennett, Kittery. 



*' The most prudent course, in a pecuniary point of vi^ew, is undoubtedly to 

 try and better the ills wc have, than fly to others we know not of; and gen- 

 erally, I believe it the better policy to improve the road we have always trav- 

 eled and are perfectly well acijuainted witli, rather than to try another entirely 

 new and perhaps unbroken. AVe have at home, all of us, plenty of good land ; 

 most of us in Maine have more than we can cultivate thoroughly with our 

 working capital ; we have a healthy and invigorating climate, the great 

 advantages of schools for our children, the means of ready communication 

 with each other, easy access to good and steady markets for all we have to 

 sell, and an absolute certainty, that if we will work industriously and intel- 

 ligently, we shall realize a comfortable provision for ourselves and families. 

 Now, with all these advantages, which are real and irrefragable, and a thou- 

 sand others, true and genuine, which each of us can detail from this train of 

 thought, and with the knowledge too, that if our lands have been exhausted, 

 we possess every facility and can recover their fertility by paying up the 

 drafts that have been made upon them, and keep them in good condition for- 

 ever, by just selling live stock instead of hay, the pernicious practice of these 

 parts. I believe it is by far the wiser and better policy, to make good that 

 which we have, rather than to sell, as has been too often done, in a hurry, and 

 then subject ourselves and families to the stinging annoyances of a new home 

 in the Avest, (the usual goal,) where we have, perhaps, neither friends or neigh- 

 bors, schools nor a healthy climate ; v.'here we may perhaps, raise to a redund- 

 ancy, but find nobody to buy our crops ; where we cannot be out of doors 

 early in the morning or at evening, without a risk of ague and fever ; where 

 the stock we keep to consume our produce, is so poor from the weary way to 

 a market, that we can sell but skinny bags of unground bones at whole bone 

 prices ; where we cannot keep turkeys enough to defend us from the ravenous 

 armies of grass-hoppers and locusts which annually march through the land, 

 and every third year rival their exploits of olden time in Egypt. I say let us 

 remain in our native State, upon familiar ground, and maintain a laudable 

 pride in living where our fathers lived and died. Let us encourage thus the 

 healthful memories connected with tlic associations of our childhood and 

 youth, and enjoying all the varieties mental, moral and physical of New 

 England life, return by labor, all our lands have lost, instead of emigrating, 

 to undergo quite as fatiguing and more wearing labor, surrounded by incon- 

 veniences and malaria." 



J. F. Anderson, South Windham. 



The fact being admitted that exhaustion prevails to a greater or 

 less extent, and that it is preferable to attempt renovation, rather 



