SECRETARY'S REPORT. -[Ql 



Tvorn out lands, embraces every department of agriculture, and can 

 hardly be considered without encroaching upon the province of others 

 ■who have the subject of manures, and so forth, committed to them. 

 I have therefore felt myself at liberty to only make a few random 

 remarks on the general subject of farming, and it may not be alto- 

 gether inapplicable to the subject to consider its pecuniary impor- 

 tance. 



It cannot have escaped general observation, that from some cause 

 or other, many good farms have become more or less exhausted, 

 and the owners have been induced to sell cheap, and emigrate to the 

 western states. And it is still a question with many, whether it is 

 better to renovate the exhausted soil, or emigrate to the new lands. 

 It is evident at a glance, that much here would depend on circum- 

 stances. A man with very limited means, a man with a family 

 which he wished to settle around him, or a young man beginninn^ in 

 life that wished to try his fortune in the vicissitudes and specula- 

 tions incident to the growth of a new country, might find it for his 

 interest to lay a foundation for the future in a new settlement, and 

 wait for the results of time and chance, to increase his means with 

 his necessities. On the other hand, a man somewhat advanced in 

 life, and desirous to spend his remaining days in the enjoyment of 

 privileges attained by society of maturcr growth, or a man with but 

 small means, may safely invest in a good soil, although somewhat 

 exhausted, and find it both pleasurable and profitable to renovate 

 and restore it to its original capabilities, and thus at once secure the 

 privileges and pecuniary value which a well regulated society and 

 accumulated and concentrated wealth o;ive to it. 



The improvements in the State, in agriculture, the exhibitions 

 and the reports of crops of various kinds which have been raised on 

 an acre of land, must sooner or later force the conviction on every 

 careful observer, that a large class of farms in this State do not now 

 yield one-fourth of their capabilities, and that the same am.ount of 

 labor and capital now expended on the whole, might be more profit- 

 ably expended on one-fourth part. I admit the reasoning of many 

 of our farmers, that if a man can profitably farm on twenty-five 

 acres of land, with hired labor, he can realize double the profit on fifty; 

 or, that from circumstances, he might for a short time, realize more 

 clear profit on the fifty acres. I admit that farming is a paying busi- 



