120 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



It was a remark of Lord Bacon, that the scientific culture of 

 gardens afforded a surer index of civilization than the advance- 

 ment of any other science ; and I apprehend that if we turn 

 to the world's history, or review our own experience, we shall 

 find, at least, that there is as much happiness in the cultivation 

 of gardens as in any other employment ; and the experience of 

 gentlemen now in this room, when given to us, will show us that 

 it is as profitable employment for the farmer, as any other branch 

 of his business. 



The cultivation- of gardens is one of the oldest occupations 

 in the world's history. Our friends in Utah, whose history was 

 so eloquently given to us last night, were not the beginners in 

 the great work of irrigation. They are merely followers of 

 those ancient polygamists, in Babylon and other places in the 

 East, who were celebrated for their hanging gardens ; and our 

 historians have shown us, that the system of irrigation, prac- 

 tised among the ancient Peruvians, whom we now know to have 

 been as fully civilized as any people existing on the earth, was 

 more complete, and attended with more difficulties, — the ruins 

 yet attest the wonderful skill with which their designs in this 

 matter of irrigation were carried out, — than the system which 

 has been put in operation by those people, in the western part 

 of our country. 



In the Old World, the raising of vegetables has attained a 

 greater height of perfection than in this country, and they are 

 used there to a far greater extent as food than among us. 

 There is no country in the world where meat is as cheap and 

 plenty as with us, and where it is partaken of so freely ; and I 

 am compelled to say, that there is no country where that article 

 of food could be so well dispensed with. The French people 

 live mainly upon vegetables, as those who have lived among 

 them know, and they have learned, not only to cultivate them 

 thoroughly, but to cook them well, and to serve them up in 

 such condition that they are palatable, and that they sustain 

 nature ; and you will find the people who partake of that kind 

 of food as cheerful and able to do as much work as those who 

 eat meat. It is a great folly to suppose that people cannot exist 

 upon a vegetable diet, to a large extent. It is a great fallacy 

 to suppose that we can do more work, exhibit a more cheerful 

 disposition, or discharge our duties as citizens or as men better, 



