116 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



do now, or .-riling to such chance customers as may come along, they will 

 conduct their business generally with reference to these market days. 

 Every farmer has, from time to time, more or less business to transact, 

 which has nothing to do with the sales of his crops; — estates are to be 

 settled, money is to be paid or received, town or county business has to 

 be attended to, and numberless small transactions occupy much of his 

 time. By common consent at first, and afterwards from its manifest con- 

 venience, these transactions would all take place on market days, and the 

 saving of time in this particular alone would be ample compensation for 

 their establishment; and when once the habit had become settled, the 

 farmer would look forward to market day next to his weekly day of rest, 

 as the pleasantest and most useful in the year. Besides purchasers that 

 would attend from a distance to supply larger markets, sellers also would 

 visit these markets to meet the wants of farmers. Agricultural imple- 

 ments, especially those in most constant use, and those also that possessed 

 any new merit or advantage, would find their way to these markets ; in 

 short, all that a farmer needs in his business, would come to him upon 

 these occasions. Farm laborers would seek this opportunity to get places, 

 and both the employer and the employed would be able each to procure 

 what was best suited to his wants. 



These market days have been established for a long time over the 

 continent of Europe, and all agricultural products are sold or bargained 

 for upon these occasions. In England they have existed since the time 

 of Alfred the Great; and to their greater frequency and number in that 

 country may be ascribed, in a great measure, its superiority in the art of 

 agriculture over all other nations. They have made the English farmer 

 a man of business as well as a mere cultivator of the soil. They have 

 been the means, by bringing him constantly in contact with those engaged 

 in the same pursuits with himself — each seeing what the others were 

 doing — of spurring him on to improvement, and of preventing that iso- 

 lation, the natural tendency of agricultural pursuits, which is the bane 

 of all progress. One of the undersigned has resided in an agricultural 

 district in England, and has familiarized himself by careful observation 

 with the general system of English agriculture, and he could find nothing 

 to account for its greater profitableness as compared with ours, except in 

 the fact, thai every farmer has a ready market close at hand for what he may 

 produce, and the power of adapting his cultivation to the knowledge he 

 has of his market. He has only to ascertain the prices obtained in the 

 great market-, and with this knowledge he knows what is a fair price in 

 the one where he sells. He makes his money crop of beef, mutton, 

 grain, butter, cheese, or other product, according to the nature of his 

 farm and of his market, and he so manages his business with reference to 

 the market, as to sell with the least possible expense in time and trans- 



