206 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



hay in the form of manure to their land. Although I am not 

 able to agree with our friend who spoke this morning, who 

 told us that fertilizers which will sell for fifty dollars a ton, 

 will pay better to buy than to take barn-yard manure for a 

 gift, — I am a great ways the other side of that, — yet I believe 

 that we can contrive, by the judicious purchase of manurial 

 agents that have never been through any manufacturer's 

 hands, like sulphate of lime, sulphate of ammonia and all that 

 class of manurial agents that everybody knows of, which 

 there is no discovery about, and nothing " dear-bought and 

 far-fetched " about, — I say, I believe we can make a compost 

 of these fertilizers, and contrive in that way to keep up the 

 condition of our fields, and at the same^time sell a portion of 

 our hay and get the money which is now being sent out of the 

 State. Let us try it. You who are near this great hay-mar- 

 ket, where you can get from thirty-five dollars to forty dollars 

 for hay, seize the opportunity ! See if you cannot afford to 

 try the experiment ! I am perfectly satisfied you can make 

 money by the operation and not depreciate the value of your 

 farms. 



I have another thought. I find by examining the statistics, 

 that we consume in Massachusetts to-day the products of five 

 hundred thousand more cattle than we have in the State. 

 Our population is dense, I grant ; we have our large manu- 

 facturing towns ; but really, the consumption of cattle products 

 in the form of beef, butter, cheese and milk is enormous ; and 

 if we had five hundred thousand more cattle in the State to- 

 day than we have, we should consume all their products. We 

 have got the idea, and it goes from mouth to mouth, "that 

 our population has become so dense, our soils are so run out, 

 and we are all so sort of fagged-out that we can't compete with 

 the West ; the West has got to supply us with cattle. New 

 England cannot afford to grow stock." Oh, no ! We may 

 possibly aff'ord to raise dairy animals ; we can make some milk 

 for the Boston market, and the markets of our large towns ; 

 we can perhaps afford to make some butter, like Mr. Ells- 

 worth here, and send it to Boston where we can get fifty 

 cents a pound for it ; but really we can't raise cattle here in 

 Massachusetts ; "the day for that has gone by ; " our popula- 

 tion is too dense ; we have not land enough, and we must 



