22 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUEE. 



EELATIOJN^S OF SCIE:N^CE TO AGRI- 

 CULTUEE. 



From an Address before the Essex Agricultural Society. 



BY E. C. BOLLES. 



To begin at a poiut not often touched, it must be in the 

 power of science to render substantial benefit to agriculture, 

 because agriculture enters nature as, in some sense, a disturb- 

 ing force. The cultivation of a country is the destruction of 

 its old balance of conditions, — the harmony established, it 

 may be, by uncounted centuries. 



When our forefathers first sailed into sight of these familiar 

 shores, Nahant Avas a wooded promontory ; and the Salem 

 hills, which are so bleak and bare to-day, were rounded with 

 the deep verdure of their ancient trees. Where dry pasture 

 is, the damp forest mosses carpeted the ground ; and streams, 

 long since vanished or dwindled to a thread, sought the sea. 

 The climate was less capricious ; the beautiful Indian summer 

 flung its week of misty gold into November's lap ; and even 

 the winter snows were true to their appointment of advent 

 or departure. The pioneer's axe opened the soil to the sun, 

 and his plough prepared the way among the stumps for the 

 grasses and grains of the Old World. It was inevitable that 

 all should change, as it had done in Europe and Asia so long 

 before. The farmer here, as everywhere, was to pursue his 

 toil in the face of difiiculties of his own creating. Thoreau, 

 in his rough Walden bean-field, expressed the general fact of 

 agriculture : " This was my curious labor all summer : to 

 make this portion of the earth's surface which had yielded 

 only cinque-foil, blackberries, johnswort and the like before, — 

 sweet w^ild fruits and pleasant flowers, — produce instead this 



