l84 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW. 



Dr. George C. Chase, President. Bates College, Lewiston. 



(Stenographic Report.) 



It might be a question why the President of Bates College 

 had been asked to speak in a convention of this kind. I might 

 explain in a word that I owe the privilege and the courtesy to 

 one of the officers, Mr. Blanchard, but am also glad and I 

 rejoice to meet here as the presiding officer another man whom 

 I knew very well at Bates College. Both Mr. Blanchard and 

 Mr. Guptill are old students of mine, and I am glad to see them 

 occupying these very honorable positions. I am especially glad 

 to meet here in this hall another Bates graduate among the 

 active competitors for a potato prize. I feel that our college is 

 honored in the earnestness, efficiency and well-directed efforts 

 of these men. 



Had I been asked, 50 years ago, to say something about dairy 

 and seed raising and cattle breeding, I might have answered 

 very well for the time, for I was a farmer boy, and was 

 familiar with all the processes of farming during the whole 

 year ; spring, with its planting and sowing, summer, with its 

 cultivating and its haying, autumn, with its harvest and garner- 

 ing, and the winter, with its cutting of the firewood, drawing it 

 to the yard and preparing it for use. I knew the whole round, 

 and regarded myself as rather an expert farmer. But, as I 

 entered the hall tonight, my eye rested upon implements of 

 which I should not have known the name had it not been for 

 the card attached. 



I remember the first mowing machine which came to our 

 town, and how the farmers gathered from far and wide to 

 watch it mowing, and the dismal prophecies they made about 

 the probable success it could have. I remember the long winter 

 evenings during which my father sat before the fire, shelling 



