2IO AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



through which the cattle would not put their noses, although 

 they would drink on the side below the plank. Thus, that man 

 who had gone to Canada and had studied all about the oil busi- 

 ness had been, himself, damming back, for twenty-three years, 

 a flood of coal oil, which the state geologist stated in 1870, was 

 worth to the State a hundred million of dollars. The city of 

 Titusvill^ stands, bodily, on this farm now. 



A young man in Massachusetts studied mining at Yale Col- 

 lege and became such an adept at mineralogy that after gradua- 

 tion he was offered a professorship in the college at a salary of 

 $45 per week but refused the offer, being highly indignant to 

 think they should offer him, a man with a brain like his, only 

 $45 a week. He decided to move to Wisconsin, and there ac- 

 cepted a position with a Copper Mining Company at $15 per 

 week with the proviso that he should have an interest in any 

 mine he should discover for the company. He had scarcely 

 gone from Massachusetts before the farmer who had purchased 

 his place was bringing in a large basket of potatoes through an 

 opening in a stone wall. As the gateway was narrow he had to 

 pull the basket through and as he did so he noticed in the upper 

 and outer corner of that stone wall next to the gate a block of 

 native silver eight inches square. And this Professor of Min- 

 ing who would not work for $45 a week because he knew so 

 much about the subject, when he sold that farm sat on that very 

 stone to make the bargain. He was born on that very farm 

 and had rubbed by that very piece of silver until it was said it 

 almost reflected his countenance. He would not believe in sil- 

 ver at home. He said : "There is no silver here in Newbury- 

 port — it is all away off somewhere else." 



How many dairymen in the State of Maine have' said : "There 

 is no money in dairying here in Maine — it is all away ofif some- 

 where else." 



There may not be actual gold mines, oil wells or silver to be 

 found on your farms here in Maine but there is surely their 

 equivalent, for there are, in the land over which you travel 

 every day, opportunities for making money, and one of these 

 opportunities is dairying. In a few words, let us enumerate a 

 few reasons why dairying should be one of the leading indus- 

 tries of our State. In the production of any article we must 

 have three things, namely a market, facilities for manufacture 



