THE FARMER'S ERRORS. 359 



the latest improvement in this implement, which runs far easier 

 than the subsoil plough in use five years ago, which was then 

 thought to be nearly perfect. In running a subsoil plough 

 through a meadow to loosen a hide-bound turf, a furrow once 

 in three or four feet is enough. There is another excellent tool 

 called the Michigan plough, which has two shares upon one 

 beam. The effect is, more completely to reverse and bury the 

 surface of the ground ; and it runs easier than any other plough 

 ever made. 



Ho.w would the French nation ever have knoAvn that there 

 were better reaping and threshing machines than their own 

 clumsy things, if the Yankees had not gone over to the great 

 Exhibition, and shown the people how far ahead of the old 

 world the new one is -in agricultural implements ? What has 

 been done at that exhibition for a nation, is done here every 

 year in twenty States, and a hundred coiinties. A dozen farm- 

 ers could hardly come together and talk an hour, or show each 

 other their tools and modes of using them, without each one 

 learning something useful. 



Only the other day I was present at a farmers' club, when 

 some of them began to talk of the damage done by the curculio. 

 They could not raise plums. Another one replied, " I have 

 not seen an insect upon my plum trees in six years ; and I have 

 one hundred and fifty trees of the choicest varieties ; and my 

 fruit is like this — [making an exhibition] — sound and smooth 

 every year." Here, then, was a perfect remedy for this great 

 pest of the farmer and fruit grower. What w^as it ? Could 

 others succeed as well ? Just as well. He planted his trees in 

 the bank of an artificial pond, leaning over the water. The 

 curculios, insects as they are, have reason enough to guide them 

 not to deposit their eggs where the progeny would fall into the 

 water and surely die. If we had only the reason of an insect, 

 we might often counteract their work of destruction. 



But I did not come here to teach you ; I only came to ask 

 you to think. If you do not raise as good grain and fruit, or 

 rear as good animals, as you see at such fairs, I want you to 

 think that you can do it. I want you to think that there are 

 at this moment a thousand of Pharaoh's cattle dragging their 

 lean carcasses through this county, whose sides are so thin, 

 that if you should grease their hides and put a lighted candle 



