12 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



magical process, will find that though he may analyze a spoon- 

 ful of dirt, and have a prescription made up at a druggist's 

 and scatter on tlie " lacking ingredients " from a dredging box, 

 he will not get quite one hundred bushels of corn to the acre. 

 The mere planting of a morus multicaulis cutting will not be 

 Bure to produce a mulberry tree, the next day, with silk stock- 

 ings and figured ribbons hanging from its branches. Of what 

 use is a rooster tall enough to eat from the top of a flour barrel, 

 if the exertion of crowing makes him fall over backwards, and 

 you have to run and pick him up whenever your hear his hoarse, 

 note ? Nor do we find many farmers who continue, year after 

 year, to raise China-tree-corn, or Rohan potatoes, or new 

 fangled grasses. A great flourish is occasionally made by those 

 who delight in using unintelligible terms to express ordinary 

 ideas, but we too often see the real mark of successful yet 

 profitable agriculture terribly overshot by the gallipot zealots. 

 Like old Acestes in the TEneid, they do not shoot the pigeon, 

 but the clouds, and the clouds burn and blaze, and stars dart 

 across the sky, and all men cry — a miracle. But with all this, 

 the proper aim of the archer was the pigeon, not the clouds. 

 It is not my purpose to cast any slur upon agricultural chemis- 

 try, or scientific farming, but I do contend that neither is of 

 much account if unattended with practical ability, common 

 Bense, and honest hard work. Theory is good, but practice 

 makes perfect — the two mingled together are invincible. 



Having glanced at the history of agriculture in our county, 

 it may be well to examine its present position, as displayed by 

 the official statistics of the Commonwealth — its ledger in fact, 

 in which every citizen can cast up the accounts of his own 

 occupation or locality, and see its "profit" or "loss." Let 

 every Essex county farmer take a good look at those columns 

 in which the agricultural productions of the State are recorded 

 — and probably there has been as much honesty in answering 

 the questions of the assessors faithfully, in this region, as else- 

 where — that he may see exactly where we stand. While the 

 tell-tale figures show that the agricultural productions consti- 

 tute nearly one-third of the entire amount of what the labor of 

 the county contributes to the real wealth of the Commonwealth, 

 they are not very encouraging in other respects. I would that 

 it were otherwise, — although I have no disposition to contribute 



