24 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



fluctuations of that interest (proverbially uncertain) which creates 

 it. Viewed in another aspect, this market can hardly be deemed a 

 particularly desirable one, inasmuch as the manure yielded by the 

 hay, oats, &c., cannot be purchased by the flirmer, and returned to 

 the soil to maintain its original fertility. Neither can I deem it a 

 reliable one, for even admitting that the demand for forest productions 

 will be always and uniformly good, the timber crop itself, although 

 it may not be all harvested in one year, nor ten, nor twenty, will not 

 last always ; and while it does, the market which it affords will be 

 gradually receding from the tilled lands. 



Suppose every township, as soon as stripped of its timber, to 'be 

 settled with energetic, industrious farmers, and their fields presently 

 to smile with bounteous harvests, what would they be worth '? What 

 would be the net proceeds of a thousand acres of oats, yielding a 

 hundred bushels to the acre, if it costs a hundred and fifty miles 

 cartage over an earth road, however good, to market them? Perhaps 

 a dime per bushel.* And this leads to the inquiry, whether with 

 present facilities for exportation alone, farming can be extensively 

 carried on in Aroostook at a profit ; and I hesitate not to say in reply, 

 that it can, provided the mode of procedure be adapted to the circum- 

 stances, and this, in my opinion, is only by adopting, in the main, 

 low farming,! to wit, the growing of cattle and horses, and sheep 



* If the oats weigh thirty-four pounds to the bushel, and cartage be estimated at 

 fifteen cents per ton per mile, it will cost thirty-eight and one-fourth cents per 

 bushel to put them into market. If they sell at forty-five cents, the net return will 

 be six and three-fourths cents; if at fifty, eleven and three-fourths cents per 

 bushel. 



t " Farming may be called high or low, according as the farmer strives by dint of 

 labor and capital to keep the land in the most fertile condition, and draw the highest 

 income from it; or, as he tries with smaller means to arrive more gradually at the 

 same result. In the one case, the course of the rotation is short, and manuring 

 frequent and heavy : in the other, there are at all events more than four crops in 

 the rotation, and a certain productiveness is even maintained without manuring at 

 all. Hop culture, market gardening, and spade husbandry, illustrate the highest 

 kind of farming, while grazing or sheep farming are of the lowest. The former is 

 practised where labor and c:ipital abound; the latter will be pursued under circum- 

 stances where labor and capital have for the time a high value as compared witk 

 land, or, in countries where the markets are remote, and the population limited and 

 deficient in agricultural knowledge. The soil has little influence in the case, for 

 some of the highest farming in England is carried on profitably on the poorest soiU 



