350 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



will be diminished in size, throngh this relief from toil, and the 

 brain will be stimulated and developed in proportion, our work 

 will go forward regularly, systematically and harmoniously. I 

 say, then, that every principle that is being brought forward by 

 your scientific school, tested in the soil, tested in mechanics, 

 tested in chemistry, should be accepted by us farmers, and to the 

 extent of our ability, we should follow their teachings. 



There is one other thought to which I would allude in connec- 

 tion with this subject, the progress of agriculture. It is this. As 

 farmers, we should endeavor to make a better use of the products 

 of the soil. Expressed differently, I mean this : To our practical 

 education as farmers, we need to add a sort of commercial educa- 

 tion, if may use the term in this connection. We should know 

 what to do with the products of our soil after we have them at our 

 hands. If you are as wise as we are in Vermont, you sometimes 

 find that you have sent your potatoes to Boston and sold them for 

 less than you could have got at your own door. You raise cattle, 

 feed them, care for them, and bring them up to maturity, perhaps 

 transport them two or three hundred miles, and then sell them at 

 a discount from the price they would have brought at home. We 

 do all these things in a blind, haphazard way. We need a com- 

 mercial education suflScient to make us quick, keen and shrewd 

 enough to know where is the best market for our products. You 

 would not consider a merchant very shrewd who should expend 

 $50,000 in freighting a vessel to Australia, and when it got there, 

 sell the cargo at 25 per cent, less than it cost him in Boston. But 

 many a man conducts his farm on pretty much the same principle ; 

 and many of us settle down with the idea that that is a part of 

 farming — that it belongs to the " ups-and-downs " of farming. 

 No sucli thing. It belongs to " ups-and-downs " of a man's 

 brains. 



I say, then, to repeat, — let us accept kindly, thankfully, such 

 suggestions as we have heard to-night, and reduce them to prac- 

 tice. I would not be too critical ; I would not find fault with 

 farmers too much ; I would find no more fault with them than I 

 am willing to have found with me ; but as I have listened to the 

 remarks that have been made, an old fable of the Greek mytht)logy 

 occurred to me, which 1 liave thouglit more than once illustrated 

 the condition of the farmer who manifests tli(> reluctance to which 

 I have referred to accept new truths as they are brought to his 

 mind. It is reported in that old mythology, that when Uranus 



