SECRETARY'S REPORT. 63 



The first step to be taken in such case doubtless is to practice the 

 utmost economy in regard to all fertilizing materials at command, 

 but this, of itself alone, is insufficient; and another step is equally 

 needful, — namely, to manufacture a greater amount of manure, and 

 this we can do by reason of our facilities for growing abundant crops 

 of grass. We can produce food for animals in larger quantities and 

 with greater ease than we can grow human food, and this, if con- 

 sumed upon I he farm by cattle and sheep will yield beef and mut- 

 ton, butter, cheese and wool — and more — for by its consumption we 

 make both meat and manure^ and we can sell the one and retain 

 the other, so that, if the plan be judiciously carried out, each suc- 

 ceeding year will find both the amount which may be sold from the 

 farm, and the ability of the farm to produce, steadily increasing. 



We are so accustomed to a mixed husbandry and to the use of 

 as much manure as can be had from the present small amount of 

 stock kept, that this strain of remark may appear to many the 

 utterance of self evident propositions and so entirely superfluous 

 and unnecessary, but notwitlistanding the fact, that scarcely a farm 

 can be found in New England where more or less stock is not kept, 

 the manure from which is almost the only reliance by which to 

 enrich the land, there is reason to believe that very few compara- 

 tively among our farmers are conscious to the full extent and in all 

 its force, of the connection which exists between the production of 

 animal food and that of human food ; nor is it easy, without exten- 

 sive and minute statistical information, to present the same in its 

 full force. 



Unfortunately the value of such information has never been ap- 

 preciated among our people, and consequently we have little in the 

 way of statistics in this country to which to look, but in respect of 

 other countries we are better supplied, and an examination of facts 

 will abundantly show that such is the intimate and necessary con- 

 nection between a stock husbandry and continuous and increasing 

 fertility of soil, that it is safe to regard the degree of attention given 

 to the culture of food for animals, as a certain index to the progress 

 of agriculture, and this not in our own country only but in all 

 northern countries of moderate natural fertility, (these being the 

 only countries where agriculture has ever made any progress worth 

 speaking of) 



