PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURE. 3 



now deem fabulous, and as merino wool brought $2 per pound, 

 the cultivation of sheep was profitable. Under the circum- 

 stances, the fathers of the society regarded domestic manufac- 

 tures as of equal importance to the tillage of the earth ; or 

 perhaps, more properly, they introduced agriculture and man- 

 ufactures as twin daughters, whom they would nurse in their 

 infancy, leading them forward hand in hand, manufactures need- 

 ing and receiving at first the most stimulus. 



The first minister of your town, your first president and 

 many of the early leaders of your society, with prophetic eye, 

 foresaw the destiny of the county as the proper seat of man- 

 ufactures, and clearly predicted what we have lived to realize. 

 Your manufactures have quite outgrown your local market, 

 and now, with largely increased fixed capital, and greatly 

 improved power and machinery, and the help of rapid and 

 cheap transportation, they buy their wool in the remotest parts 

 of this hemisphere, and even in Australia and South Africa, 

 and send their varied products to the great cities of the sea- 

 board and the far West. Whether the President yet wears 

 your cloth or not is immaterial ; he might do worse, yet you 

 have supplied not only the soldiers of the Union, but thousands 

 of the sovereign people of the various States, and your soft and 

 beautiful blankets cover the sleepers in nearly all the palace 

 cars of the various railroads which net our vast country like a 

 web. All honor, then, to the pioneers who led the way into 

 this beautiful region when it was a wilderness, and who laid 

 the foundations of this society, and of the other civil as well as 

 religious institutions which have become. established, which we 

 now so much enjoy, and which it will be our proud privilege to 

 transmit unimpaired, if not improved, to our posterity. 



EARLY ADVICE. 



Fifty years ago, the president of your society, father of your 

 present speaker, in the annual address remarked that education, 

 commerce and manufactures were receiving the fostering aid 

 of the government, while " agriculture, the parent of all, seems 

 to have been deserted and neglected by all." 



At that time these material interests were in comparative 

 infancy, and needed all the aid they received. They have con- 

 tinued to receive bounties and protection until education is 



