NEW- ENGLAND FARMING RESTORED. 29 



prehensible because the State has such large portions under 

 such splendid cultivation. For I take it the oldest farming, 

 and perhaps the richest farm-lands, in the Union, are found 

 about Northampton, in the Connecticut, and also in some of 

 the towns of the Housatonic Valley. Such a puzzle was it 

 to a New- York friend, my companion in a carriage-ride, 

 " What is the matter ? " he would ask. " Why is not this 

 land under cultivation ? Price ? " — " No : you may buy it 

 almost at your own figure." — " Is there any quality of soil 

 that does not appear upon the surface?" — " The very next 

 field cuts two tons of hay to tlie acre, and you may see the 

 heavy sward under the hardback." — "Health?" — "It is 

 the healthiest region in the world." — " Market ? " — " It has 

 New York on the right hand, and Boston on the left." — " So- 

 ciety ? " — " Why, you are in New England ! " — " Morals and 

 education?" — "Why, you are in Massachusetts, where such 

 things are devised." It was a conundrum, and he gave it up. 

 We need not wonder; for taking together price, products, 

 society, markets, health, location, it may be affirmed that it 

 can compete with any region in the world in opportunities for 

 that legitimate culture of the soil which brings what is now 

 most needed, — a living, maybe cash, surely character, and 

 capital in real estate. 



The Virginia pine, the Connecticut white-birch, or the 

 Massachusetts hardback, alike stand for two of the three 

 stages of agriculture, if the use of that noble word in these 

 stages be not premature. First the settler uses, and uses ?<j9, 

 the vegetable mould which Nature bestows as a free gift for 

 a start, — a kind of gift breakfast ; for, says DeQuincey, " a 

 man may earn his dinner, but breakfast must be a gift." A 

 man without his breakfast is a poor spiritless creature, and 

 in no condition to earn one. But this first gift is soon con- 

 sumed. An old history of Berkshire County says that the 

 first settlers feared that they would have no building-mate- 

 rial, so deeply were the stones covered by the richness of for- 

 est mould. It was not, probably, a literal fact ; but it stood 

 for a very important one. Farming at this stage is a kind 

 of careless, easy appropriation of Nature's offerings, a simple 

 picking-up of gifts thrown down, with as little skill or sci- 

 ence required as of the pigs under tlie beech-trees when the 

 forest itself shakes down for them its ripened mast. Then 



