PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE. 1^1 



and make such use of it as shall meet the approbation of our own 

 sense of right, and of those who are to succeed us. 



It may be profitable to inquire whether we are, faithfully dis- 

 charging our duty ? 



Does the soU which we first broke, and which then poured forth 

 it fruitful stores, continue to yield an equal amount ? And if not, 

 what must be the result of such practice if continued through a 

 few more successive generations ? The reply is plain. In the 

 distance will be seen neglected and forsaken fields, delapidated 

 homes, wandering families, decaying commerce, prostrated manu- 

 factures, and a wretched population ; literature, the sciences and 

 arts, music, painting and poetry, and all that goes to enable a 

 nation, would follow in the dismal train. Patriotism and love of 

 country, would soon die out from the hearts of the people, and 

 this fair fabric become a prey to the rapacity of other nations. 



But such shall not be the fact with you — your presence here 

 to-night declares that the art of dressing and keeping the land, and 

 the increase of its products shall progress among you. 



" The agriculture of no people or country is complete in itself. 

 Everything valuable in our gardens and fields is the result of 

 improvement. We have hardly a plant or fr'uit in its original 

 state. Our vegetables and fruits, and grains, are improvements 

 by change of climate and culture on inferior or worthless stock. 

 Fruits as delicious as the peach, and vegetables as delicate as 

 celery, have been derived from the most acrid and poisonous 

 originals. Of a mere thorn man has made, as if by enchantment, 

 the beautiful and fragrant rose. Before he thus labored, the olive 

 was dry and ofiensive, the peach bitter, the pear had but a hard, 

 woody flesh, and the apple tree was full of thorns. Man labored, 

 and the thorns fell ; the rose doubled and trebled its flowers, the 

 peach and the pear filled with perfumed juice, the olive lost its 

 bitterness, and the wild grasses were converted into waving fields 

 of life-sustaining grain. A French agriculturist has tamed every 

 individual member of the family of thistles, — exposing to the sun 

 those that grow in the shade, and burying in the dark those that 

 derive acridity from the solar rays — and has rendered them savory 

 and fit for human food."* 



The celery, for instance, once a tough, bitter and dangerous 

 plant, repulsive in its appearance, and shunned by man and beast 

 as worthless as food, and a blotch upon the fair face of nature, but 



* G. F. Magoun. 



