;j^58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE., 



to-dayi and that of his invention, have scarcely a point of resem- 

 blance. 



I have thus imperfectly shown that the farmers of the present 

 day live under the most favorable circumstances for making great 

 advances in the art of cultivating the earth. Peace pervades the 

 land, leaving commerce free to seek new sources of demand for 

 agricultural products, while the increased attention to manufact- 

 uring pursuits creates new markets at our doors. Facilities for 

 transportation have also given agricultural productions a remunera- 

 ting value. "A ton of corn is estimated not to be worth hauling 

 by wagon, when one hundred and seventy miles from the market; 

 while at the same distance upon a railroad it would be worth twenty- 

 two dollars ten cents. A ton of wheat two hundred and thirty miles 

 from market is not worth the hauling by wagon, but by railroad it 

 would be worth forty-four dollars, thirty-five cents." We have 

 more and better markets than our predecessors ; better implements 

 and machines to work with, and more valuable fei'tilizing agents. 



What more, then, it may be asked, is wanted of the farmer? 

 Why is he not noio discharging his full duty to the soil and to 

 those who are to succeed him ? 



I answer — He does not do justly by the soil, because, as a 

 general practice, he annually takes away from it more than he 

 returns, and this principle, carried out, would result in the starva- 

 tion and extinction of the race. The census tables show that the 

 wheat crop of New York, in some counties, has fallen as low as 

 eight bushels to the acre, where formerly from thirty to forty were 

 produced. Lands deemed inexhaustible, have been crept almost 

 to barrenness. Large sections of territory in Virginia, formerly 

 very productive, have become utterly sterile, and been abandoned 

 by the original cultivators. An .average crop of corn in that State 

 is now ;0nly 15 bushels per acre, and of wheat only five ! Our 

 own forest lands have not only been stript of their noble trees, but 

 robbed of their original richness, until nearly all the elements of 

 fertility are exhausted. Five to ten acres of pasture lands are 

 now required to fed a cow, where one acre was once sufficient. 



No well-devised system for the preservation of manurial agents 

 exists even on our farms ; and in the cities, the products of our 

 fields flow down the gutters and sewers into the remorseless maw 

 of the sea and are lost. Our pastures are barren mostly from the 

 exhaustion of their phosphates, fed oflF by herds of cows, and 

 carried away in milk, butter and cheese. Nor is the value and 



