FAEMEKS' INSTITUTES. 135 



AFTERNOOX SESSION. 



The exercises in the afternoon commenced with a paper by Mr. C. L. Inger- 

 soll of the Agricultnral College. Subject, "What Stock Shall We Keep?" 

 See lectures given at the close of this record of the mstitutes. 



After an interesting discussion which followed the reading of Mr. Ingersoll's 

 paper, Kobert McKay, Esq., of Bruce, was called upon, Avho gave an unwritten 

 address. Subject, ''The Farmer's Road to Success." "We are sorry that we 

 have not been able to induce Mr. McKay to write out his address for this re- 

 port, as the theme was an eminently practical one, handled in a thoroughly 

 practical and masterly way, by one of the most successful farmers of our State. 

 The line of thought presented by Mr. McKay was substantially as follows : 



He said : First, That the farmer must have a love for his vocation. Many 

 he said took to farming because there seemed to be nothing else open to them, 

 but having no love for their vocation they were restive in it and rarely if ever 

 succeeded. Second, There must be mental and physical adaptation for farm- 

 ing. Third, Many fail because they attempt to grasp too much. Many a man 

 might keep a country store successfully who could not fill the place of A. T. 

 Stewart, so many a man might succeed on forty acres who fails on three or 

 four hundred acre^. Fourth, In farming, as in other things, intelligent labor 

 is essential to success.- Tlie speaker, in a very interesting manner, referred to 

 the many advantages which young men had in this country, and to the grand 

 opportunities before them. With industiy and economy there was no reason 

 why they should not become wealthy. For his own part he would not bo afraid 

 to start out a young man poor, and be w'orth a hundred thousand dollars before 

 his hair turned gray. We understand that this is about what Mr. McKay has 

 done, and no doubt with his youth renewed he could do it again. 



Mr. Thomas Uawson of Memphis was next called up, who read the following 

 paper on 



INCREASING THE FERTILITY OF OUR FARMS. 



If I were asked to tell how little I know of farming, and of the best and 

 most certain treatment of the soil to increase its fertility, I might make some 

 showing, for I have truly and repeatedly said that we only grope our way along, 

 for in the management of our farms we apply one fertilizer and then another, 

 and wait and watch for the result, and if successful on one soil we repeat the 

 trial on another, and again wait and watch, and find quite a different result : and 

 we are led to ask, is there no certain management with certain results, or has 

 the system of farm tillage no fixed or defined laws? If this were true we might 

 presume that the Allwise Being, in his grand providence, had overlooked one 

 of the most important provisions for the production of creature comforts, but 

 we are not disposed to excuse our ignorance by findmg fault with him who has 

 done all things well. There is a means by which we can determine as surely 

 the character of the various soils as productive or otherwise, which is as certain 

 as the rules of the physician to prescribe the proper remedy for disease. By 

 a proper knowledge of agricultural chemistry, soil can be analyzed, and the 

 various properties, and their quantities can be determined, and by experiment 

 and observation our learned agriculturists have found out the proportion of 

 elements which constitute fruitful soils, and are enabled to direct us in supply- 

 ing the needful element ; but I am no chemist, and must stop here, contenting 



