182 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



fertilizer until I had used all the manure I could make at 

 home, and I think that is a very good rule for any farmer to 

 adopt ; that is, to use all the manure on his own place that 

 can be obtained at a reasonable price, and then, if he likes, 

 purchase in the market the best he can find. I have almost 

 always fallen short in the amount of manure I required or 

 wanted, and have dabbled a little in commercial fertilizers ; 

 but still I have not gone into the trade with that degree of con- 

 fidence which I should like always to have in my fellow-men. 

 I Avould like to go into the market anywhere and purchase 

 any article, and find it precisely what it was recommended to 

 be. 



Now, gentlemen, there is one little point upon which I 

 must disagree with my friend who has just taken his seat ; 

 that is in regard to the experiments made in agriculture in 

 order to establish facts. You cannot, here in Massachusetts, 

 make experiments that will hold good in other sections. Some 

 things I said to you last Tuesday may not be applicable to 

 your cases here. Your soils diifer from ours in Herkimer ; 

 your climatic influences are difierent, and an agricultural fact 

 established in the north part of this town, may not answer 

 even for the south part. This man's farm on one side of a 

 ravine has a different soil from that man's on the other side of 

 it ; behind that hill or that piece of forest, the climatic influ- 

 ences are altogether different from what they are on a place a 

 little bit elevated, with a similar soil. Again, the climatic 

 influences are changed by some gorge running down between 

 hills, so that the climatic influences are very different in dif- 

 ferent localities, and we as farmers, to a very great extent, 

 must eventually, if we ever know anything, bring these facts 

 out at our own homes, with the aids which these institutions 

 will afford us. They must act as our aids, but we must act 

 as principals, after all. 



Again, an agricultural fact cannot be established, as my 

 friend said, in one season, neither in a rainy season nor in a 

 dry season, nor in one rainy season and one dry season put 

 together. It takes ten years at least to establish an agricul- 

 tural fiict. Under the many changes of our climate, ten years 

 is little time enough. You see how that places us. When 

 we consider the isolated character of the farmer's life ; how 



