278 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



string of peanuts, native to Tolland county soil, that I ever saw 

 anywhere. Where such millennial peanuts are possible the best 

 fruit of the best civilization is forever possible. 



Local peanuts will need a little common-sense protection and a 

 little of the fostering care that we read about. "We musn't laugh 

 at the small peanut farmer who begins in Connecticut with a 

 broad-tired hand-cart, nor ridicule the home-like hovels which 

 spring in the woods along side of our railways. 



No check of railway farming can be easy while there is a rood 

 of government land left to appropriate for extra "scientific" or 

 "educational'* purposes, unless we give our railway building army 

 something to do at home. We paid the heart's blood of Connec- 

 ticut for every dollar we made by slave labor, and we have yet to 

 educate- ourselves in scientific agriculture by helping the blacks 

 and whites of the south to restore their ruined plantations. 



These railway engineers, contractors, and builders must be 

 taught to see the immense spaces of country, north and south, 

 they have overrun and swept of timber, game, and all the charm 

 and wealth of a virgin soil. The railway light, streaming through 

 deserted farms and plantations — like the old-fashioned tallow- 

 candle — only serves to make the outer darkness more visible. If 

 we are to worship and admire the railway in the near future as we 

 have in the near past, the happy children of railway civilization 

 must soon be growing up in our second-growth wilderness to call 

 it blessed. 



Before our land can be properly laid out in small farms we need 

 a survey of the State in the interest of boundaries — common 

 roads, as well as railways. Possible new lines in accordance with 

 the natural shape of the country must be made public so that every 

 citizen may know what is proper to do, and in v/hat directions 

 roads should be made to open the country for settlement and the 

 convenience of trade and travel. Farm land needs cutting with 

 the same economy that village land does. But how many of our 

 land-owners know or have ever thought exactly how their land 

 should be divided to meet the necessities of the future? 



Only a short time since I was at work upon a village street with 

 houses on both sides of the way, and yet no resident knew ex- 

 actly where the lines of the street were. 



We are too careless of these matters. Some of us know as 

 much of the surface of the moon, for any practical, engineering 



