336 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



THE FARMER'S AVANTS. 



From an Address before the "Worcester South Society. 



BY HON. AMASA WALKER. 



Nothing can be more evident than that the great want of the 

 Massachusetts farmer, at the present day, is the means of en- 

 riching his land. His operations are limited, not by the size of 

 his fields, but the quantity of his compost. He has more land 

 than manure, and his farm is really not half cultivated. If he 

 owns a hundred acres of land, he plants perhaps from five to 

 seven annually. Why not fifteen or twenty ? Merely because 

 he has not the manure necessary to secure a crop. He has every 

 thing else ; the best of tools, and all the appliances of farming, 

 and can get a good price for his products, but he lacks the one 

 thing needful for him as a farmer, the means of securing the 

 productiveness of his soil ; and he cannot but see and feel that 

 the science of farming, in his case, is reduced simply to the 

 science of fertilization. 



If all this is true, the important point to which the attention 

 of the farmer should be directed is clearly indicated. 



Many very valuable improvements have been suggested to 

 the farmer within the last thirty or forty years. 



He has been told that he must practice a rotation of crops, 

 and this is now generally done. He has been told to preserve 

 his manures from the wasting influences of the sun and rains, 

 and barn cellars are veiy common at the present day. Probably 

 there are one hundred now to where there was one fifty years 

 since. 



He has been instructed, also, to keep his barnyard well sup- 

 plied with soil or muck, and this practice is now nearly uni- 

 versal. 



He has been told also, that he may greatly improve his 



