340 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



agriculture of all time be ? It must be, as I have said before, 

 natural history applied. It is natural history applied to definite 

 ends. I now make this point, which I ask you to consider. Agri- 

 culture stands related to every other pursuit in life. Let us in- 

 quire how it stands related. We can best do that by presenting 

 some of the reasoning we sometimes hear among farmers. The 

 farmer not unfrequently makes this assertion, which seems to him 

 perfectly proper, with reference to manuring his land : "We should 

 never allow our hay crops to be carried away from the farm ; the 

 hay should be consumed upon the farm, and only the drain of the 

 live stock allowed from it; the manure should be returned to it." 

 But, gentlemen, you will not fail to see, on a moment's reflection, 

 that large cities, centres of commercial and professional activities, 

 are just as much a pifrt and parcel of the plan of the Almighty on 

 the surface of this earth as agriculture itself, and if we are to have 

 a large city like Bangor, or Boston, or New York, or like the cities 

 of the old world, they must have, as they are at present constitu- 

 ted, at least, a large number of animals, and they must derive their 

 sustenance from the soil. Whether you will or not, your hay will 

 go to those cities. You cannot consume it all at home, because, 

 if you attempt to do that, you fight the Almight}'' in his plans. 

 Your hay crops will go, in some measure, to the cities. You are 

 then brought seriously to consider the question whether you will 

 attempt to transport back again to the soil whence it came these 

 waste products in the form of manure. Study the problem for 

 one moment. Take London for example : a mighty city ; all the 

 soils of the earth, almost, contribute to its sustenance ; our own 

 western fields being drained every year to supply a large amount 

 of breadstuifs to that city. Is it possible that the whole can cotae 

 back to our own land to restore it ? Tell mo what feats of engi- 

 neering would be equal to the transference of such immense masses 

 of matter as the sewerage of a city like London back to the soil. 

 We should need all our sciences, mathematics, physics, chemis- 

 try, — directed by civil engineering, and applied to their utmost, 

 and should not be able to do it then. That is not all. Take one 

 of our manufacturing towns. Its sewerage inevitably passes, 

 more or less, after all precautions are taken, into the streams, the 

 streams carry it to tlie ocean, and the ocean finally swallows up 

 these products of the land, we resorting all the while to some 

 temporary expedients to obtain substitutes for that matter. 



Now, do we not see that agriculture stands related to all these 



