40 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



when it is made it is worth its cost. Gentlemen, we believe it 

 impossible to compute the amount, or the worth, of the practi- 

 cal physical science which a wise farmer acquires and uses in 

 sending up to joyful productiveness his kingdom of earth, 

 water, sod, stone and tree. Such men are walking folios. 

 They are exhaustless cyclopedias of available information in 

 plough-ology, hoe-ology, corn-ology, barn-ology, fowl-ology, 

 husk-ology, stock-ology, haw-ology and gee-ology. They are 

 practically, and thus really, the graduates of and the professors 

 in the great University of natural science, and have the hono- 

 rary degree, LL. D. — Lords of Land and Digging ! The col- 

 lege they enter and honor is one in which problems are solved, 

 not by pen and blackboard, logarithms and algebraic signs, but 

 by a personal use of the axe, the hoe, the yoke, the plough, 

 the scythe and the Hail. These problems are unsurpassed in 

 reach of influence and importance* of effect in the records of 

 man's varied and vast intellectual achievements. They them- 

 selves may not so think or so intend : but, gentlemen, so it is, 

 and so it must ever be. The true farmer is, and must ever be, 

 a profound natural philosopher, the author of monthlies, 

 quarterlies and annuals, the articles of which are the most sub- 

 stantial and tasteful which ever lie upon our tables. Of all other 

 productions, these of the farmer are the most surely in demand, 

 the most eagerly devoured, and the most effectively digested. 

 To these productions not a few of the mighty in science, literature 

 and the arts, delight to do homage, finding, like the 0. W. H. 

 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, in eatology, their " chief end," 

 their most profound satisfaction. True, such farmers may 

 never own or read Bacon's Essays, but what is better, they 



ay bacon itself. They may not study the natural resources 

 or productions of Turkey, but they can and do furnish turkey 

 as a production and resource. 



Tbusthc farmer is a philosopher, who, by his works, sustains 

 all other philosophers, am! without whose mind and labor and 

 productions, physical existence, and with it mind itself, must 

 fly the earth. As important, therefore, as are all the arts and 



■nces, in the higher developments of civilized and Christian 

 man, just as important is it that the minds of agriculturists 

 task themselves in the attainment and use of knowledge. Tims 

 only can they, with the blessing of God, render nature mighty, 



