26 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



This fourfokl increase of worked area, has been accomplished 

 solely by adopting every improvement in tools and machinery. 



In some portions of our state, farmers are now conducting their 

 operations with less manual labor than formerly, by reason of in- 

 creased wages. , This decrease in help is hardly compensated by 

 facilities afforded in the use of the few improved implements they 

 have secured. 



Farmers have been discouraged from growing roots by reason of 

 the great amount of labor required in their culture. The recently 

 published account of the premium crop of carrots in Kennebec 

 county is noticeable. The crop was grown on a sandy loam, — the 

 two preceding crops being carrots ; the dressing, compost — made 

 mostly of muck ; all the antecedents tending to show good tilth and 

 the absence of weeds ; yet the item of weeding is set down at the 

 rate of twenty-four days per acre. Reasoning from our experience 

 with a stony soil, we should conclude that by the use of a wheel-hoe 

 that may be made for a dollar, the above crop could have been 

 tended with half that expenditure of time, and the ground left at 

 the end of the season, absolutely free from weeds. Field culture of 

 roots, on any extended area, can be conducted with greater economy 

 by horse-implements than by hand. But other means and agencies 

 than mere words must be summoned to aid us in fixing in the minds 

 of the generality of farmers, a due appreciation of the importance 

 of this subject. They often find words alone very evanescent things. 

 They want a " visible and tangible embodiment of science " in the 

 shape of improved implements, often thrust in their faces. 



Too much importance cannot well be attached to agricultural ex- 

 hibitions, for the impetus they have contributed to such advancement 

 in the art of husbandry as has been witnessed. These call the 

 farmer and his sons from home. It is their school, the terms of 

 which are short, but its lessons have an enduring impress. It is 

 these exhibitions on which we must rely more than on our use of 

 language, for the success that shall attend the present effort. At 

 these shows, while we look with pleasure and pride on the results of 

 labor and skill as displayed in our stock, and in the products of the 

 field and the garden, we look on the other side with equal interest, 

 to the implements by the aid of which all these mighty results have 



