320 PISCATAQUIS CENTllAL SOCIETY. 



for professions, but treating those devoted to the farm as if it were 

 an axiom, that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and imich 

 learning will make them mad. An improvement is, however, takinfr 

 place in this respect, and farming is fast arising to the dignity of a 

 science in which the brain, as well as the body, can find healthful 

 exercise, and the mind enjoy pleasant recreation. 



No department of activity presents ampler scope for mental exer- 

 cise, and it is to be hoped it will be found sufliciently inviting to 

 retain in its interest, many young men who are now filling up and 

 overstocking some of the professions, to live a life of dependence and 

 anxiety, their capabilities half developed, their powers of usefulness 

 untried, content to sustain about the same relation to the interests 

 of society and the noble purposes of life, as do barnacles to the 

 utility and value of the ship, to the hull of which they are attached. 



There have been within a few years, many improvements in agri- 

 cultural implements and appliances, and many valuable additions 

 made to the stock of knowledge. Every farmer who desires to pur- 

 sue his work intelligently and profitably, will of course avail himself 

 of these improvements, and emulate the spirit of enterprise which is 

 now happily inspiring to endeavor an achievement in this depart- 

 ment of industry. 



While I would not recommend you to follow every vagary — to 

 pursue every fanciful and Utopian scheme, yet I would have you 

 foster a spirit of inquiry in regard to the best methods of labor, the 

 capacities of soils, the best fertilizers, the adaptation of different 

 crops to different soils, the utility of subsoiling, underdraining, and 

 so on, through the whole range of farm, garden, cattle and dairy 

 husbandry. I would encourage you to bring to your labor cultivated 

 minds, both as a means of utility and profit, and an inexhaustible 

 source of happiness. 



All investigation is rewarded with ultimate success, if not in the 

 particular department in which it is applied, yet it will be efficient 

 in results somewhere ; though you miss the object at which you aim, 

 you will perhaps, attain some other object of more value. Earnest 

 application, firm and resolute endeavor, always meet their reward. 

 The alchemists essayed to discover the art of transmuting base 

 metals into gold. They failed in this, but their researches led to 

 the discovery of the science of chemistry, of incalculably more value 



