360 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Thursday, October 21, 1869. 



Tlie Board met at 10 o'clock, the President in the Chair. The 

 Chair announced as first in order, a lecture on " The Valuation of 

 Manures," by the Secretary of the Board. 



THE VALUATION OF MANUEES. 



The changes which have come to pass in the agriculture of 

 Maine during the past ten years are greater by far than those of 

 any previous decade. Nor is this to be wondered at when we 

 consider that it includes that most eventful period whose history 

 is yet to be written, but of which Ave know, that, besides involving 

 terrible sacrifice of life and happiness ; besides calling forth, from 

 deep slumbers, patriotism and allied virtues ; besides creating 

 Sanitary and Christian Commissions and giving wings to clouds 

 of Florence Nightingales, sending them on missions of love ; 

 besides abolishing slavery and emancipating whites, rich and poor ; 

 besides piling up taxes for years to come, it accomplished other 

 things, and very different things as well. It caused many to run 

 to and fro ; and knowledge to be increased, and about a great 

 many matters. It shook all classes prodigiously, and the quiet 

 farmer not less than others. When not bodily shaken out of the 

 furrows into the I'anks, it shook him out of many old-time notions, 

 and into familiar acquaintance Avith many facts, both of science 

 and practice, of which he would otherwise have known nothing in 

 a long time. It compelled attention to ways and means to econo- 

 mize human labor ; to enable few hands to do the work before done 

 by many. 



Witness the harvest of the current year's grass crop ; never 

 excelled in value, — and this not nearly so much because of large 

 amount, as because of being harvested near the time when it was 

 in its best estate. Instead of a large proportion being left standing 

 until tlic gum and sugar, the oil and the starch were converted by 

 the processes of nature into wood and seed, the grass was mostly 

 cut wlien its nutritious constituents were present in maximum 

 amount. 



We thankfully acknowledge the Divine Providence in sending 

 favorable weather, without wliose help man's labor would have 

 availed as little in this as in any other direction. But it is also 

 well to consider that this aid would have availed a great deal less, 



