182 WEST OXFORD SOCIETY. 



improvement in transportation tluit one horse could draw a car 

 loaded with twenty-five tons at the rate of four miles an hour. 

 Steam engines for that purpose were not thought of. The fluid we 

 burn in our lamps, the India rubber shoes on our feet, the zinc painti 

 on our houses, the white paper on which we write, and even the 

 pens are the developments of science. We can scarcely think of 

 any article of clothing, or any implement of labor on which is noi 

 stamped the development of some of nature's laws. 



On the spot where we now stand, there lived and roamed, one 

 hundred and fifty years ago, the red man. A powerful tribe of men, 

 they were. As you plow the soil, occasionally is brought to light 

 an arrow-head made of some hard mineral. I have looked at them 

 with the eye of a mineralogist, and have wondered how they could 

 succeed in bringing different kinds of minerals into such a similarity 

 of form. I doubt if an American living could make one similar, 

 without much practice. To make an arrow-head, a scalping-knife, 

 and a tomahawk out of stone, was the extent of their skill. The 

 hand of science lent them no aid. The skill and time expended in 

 learning to make an arrow-head, couli, with the aid of science, have 

 made a plow or a steam-engine. 



On the beautiful intervales of the Saco. that same, red man culti- 

 vated a little corn. On the same spot the white man has the aid of 

 science to plow his fields and reap and mow his harvests. 



To the red man there was no architecture save in the humble 

 wigwam. To the white man, there stands the well-constructed 

 dwelling with all the conveniences of life conducive to his comfort. 



Nor need we contrast the red and the white man to prove our 

 position. Shut out from the white man the improvements of the last 

 twenty-five years in agricultuie, and he would make a sorry farmer. 

 The fiist class of farmers in our county, now have their plows con- 

 structed on the most approved pattern, and adapted to the various 

 kinds of soil. The moldboard has been submitted to the hands of 

 the scientific man, and its form so constructed as shall offer the least 

 resistance and best effect the object. The cultivator, as well as 

 plow, has been constructed in such a way as to be light, effectual 

 and durable. Tiie horse is now made to do much of the hard labor 

 that once required the toil and sweat of the farmer. He not only 

 plows his laud, but sows his grain, hoes his corn and potatoes, mows- 



