DAIRY MEETING. 209 



OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROFITABLE DAIRYING IN 



MAINE. 



By C. E. Henry, Pittsfield. 



I wish to bring before your minds at this time three illustra- 

 tions of lost opportunities as given by the Rev. Dr. Conwell of 

 Philadelphia in his noted lecture entitled "Acres of Diamonds," 

 and I am sure you will be able to make the application your- 

 selves. "A certain man in California, in 1847 owned a ranch 

 there. He heard that gold had been discovered in Southern 

 California, though it had not and he sold his farm to Col. Sut- 

 ton who put a mill on the little stream below the house. One 

 day his little girl gathered some of the sand in her hands from 

 the raceway and brought it into the house. While she was 

 sifting it through her fingers a visitor noticed the first shining 

 scales of gold that were ever discovered in California. A few 

 years ago a one-third owner of this farm was receiving $120 in 

 gold for every fifteen minutes of his life, sleeping or waking." 



Prof. Agassiz, the great geologist of Harvard University, said 

 at one time at a summer school of mineralogy that there once 

 lived in Pennsylvania a man who owned a farm and decided to 

 sell, but before selling wrote a cousin who lived in Canada that 

 he would like employment collecting coal oil. His cousin in- 

 formed him that he could not engage him because he did not 

 know anything about the "oil business." So then he set him- . 

 self at the study of the whole theory of the coal oil business 

 with commendable zeal. He studied till he found out where 

 coal oil originated, what it looked like, how to refine it and where 

 to sell it. Then he wrote his cousin: "I know all about the 

 oil business from the second day of God's creation to the pres- 

 ent time," and so he obtained the position he desired, selling his 

 Pennsylvania farm for $833. The farmer who purchased the 

 old place, went out one day to arrange a place for watering his 

 cattle but found that the previous owner had already arranged 

 for that. There was a stream running down the hill back of 

 the barn and across the stream from bank to bank a plank had 

 been placed edgewise at a slight angle for the purpose of throw- 

 ing over to one side of the brook a dreadful looking scum 



14 



