214 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



son referred to the necessity of fertilizers or plant food. My 

 friend Chamberlain is a shrewd man. lie almost bei'ated our new 

 county here this morning, from the very fact that he wanted your 

 disciplined judgment to make suggestions for the future improve- 

 ment of this county. In fact, its true status, its true wealth, was 

 more frankly, I will not say more honestly, but more frankly 

 stated by the second speaker. I do not, however, attach any 

 blame to my neighbor Chamberlain, who knows how to make the 

 most out of everything. 



The soil of Piscataquis poor and thin? Yes; drift soil, not 

 alluvial soil, not the prairie. Yes, poor ; not perhaps in the com- 

 parison, but poor. Do you know that the soil on the face of this 

 globe is growing poor from year to year, and from generation to 

 generation, with very few exceptions ? Do you know that the 

 question of food for the millions that are to inhabit this earth, if 

 the population is to go on increasing, is a question of vital impor- 

 tance ? If your colleges, as friend Robinson suggested, through 

 their professors and the investigating minds of those who are, and 

 who shall become students, shall discover no means, no resources 

 by Avhich to regenerate the earth where it has become poor and 

 barren, and improve it, the population must become thin. The 

 soil of Piscataquis poor! Is it not poor elsewhere? The great 

 prairies of the West are yielding from year to year a less return 

 per acre, and from generation to generation a less abundant har- 

 vest, with their modes of agriculture ; the settled portions of the 

 South have already been drained, in many instances, almost to 

 barrenness ; in many parts of New England, and even in Massa- 

 chusetts, the wealthiest State in proportion to her population and 

 her territory in this' nation, the agricultural towns are becoming 

 depopulated ; and when you look across the v/ater, although Eng- 

 land may have fertile lands, she secures them by obtaining bones 

 from the great battle-fields from the continent, and sustains the 

 productiveness of her soil by every means that can be suggested, 

 not only by home production, but by importations from abroad ; 

 the rich valley of the Nile is becomming submerged by the sands 

 of Sahara, and is being narrowed from j'car to year ; the mountains 

 of Central Europe have been denuded of their forests, and the 

 gravel, the hard earth and the rocks have been cast upon the 

 plains, so as not only to make the mountains barren, but to lock 

 up the soil of the vallej^s ; — all these things, with the fact that the 

 rains wash the mountains, and carry the soil into the tributary 



