404 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



renovation — what useful inventions for the aid of the farmer it has 

 been the means of suggesting — what an avalanche of bugs, of 

 various kinds and with various sorts of hums, it has saved men 

 from, and what imposition, of one kind or another, by sharpers 

 and practitioners of different degrees, it has guarded them against. 

 More than all this : it has placed the mowing machine, and horse 

 rake, the horse hoe, the seed drill and the power fork upon almost 

 every farm — it has given the sewing machine to the women of the 

 world — it has multiplied our apples, and grapes, and pears, our 

 grains, and seeds, and vegetables, until the varieties of each are 

 many times greater than they were forty years ago, and especially 

 adapted for the different locations and latitudes of our country — 

 it has placed thoroughbred stock, or improved stock, the direct 

 results of thorough-breeding, upon every farm — it has formed 

 agricultural societies in every State and county, and almost every 

 town, in the land — it has established an agricultural college in 

 half the States of the Union — it has rendered chemistry, and 

 botany, and entomology and nearly all the sciences subservient to 



the needs and uses of the farmer — it has but stop, I hear you 



say, has the agricultural press done all this ? I answer, yes, all 

 this ; and it has accomplished it too by being in itself the grand 

 central power in the diffusion of knowledge and intelligence ; the 

 prime agency that has acted upon individuals and communities to 

 bring about the changes I have pictured. And am I claiming for 

 the press more than belongs to it ? 



But, grand as have been the results that may be traced to the 

 agricultural press — and I beg you to understand that in what I 

 have said I limit the word to the agricultural journal and news- 

 paper, leaving entirely out of the question the thousand upon 

 thousands of agricultural books — and powerful as has been its 

 influence in bringing agriculture from a low and menial occupa- 

 tion, one regarded as fit only for blockheads and dunces, to the 

 dignified position of a profession demanding for its successful 

 prosecution high and noble qualities, there are yet grander results 

 for it to achieve in the future. Its mission is not yet completed, 

 nor its work finished. It will continue to wield its silent, effec- 

 tive force until all the work of the farm shall be performed by 

 mechanical agency, until our crops shall be doubled, and every 

 inferior animal regarded as not worth raising. Its work will not 

 cease so long as an acre of unproductive land remains to be ren- 

 ovated or an insect enemy to be routed. It shall see our land 



