38 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



barns, with their attached buildings for the convenience and 

 comfort of the family and the domestic animals of the farm. 



There are clearer indications among farmers here, than any- 

 where else, of intelligence, good taste and advancement, and 

 more unmistakable evidence of a desire for improvement, 

 education and position, and a pecuniary ability to gratify that 

 desire. If our State is so destitute of agricultural facilities ; 

 if our climate is so very inhospitable as it is represented, and 

 the facts in relation t3 our farmers which have been stated are 

 true, we have a riddle for which there is no solution. 



Now let lis see if we cannot find some other and better 

 reason for these ideas about the agricultural capacity of our 

 State, and for so large an emigration of our people. The birth- 

 place of the Caucasian race was in the temperate regions of 

 Asia, surrounding the Black Sea ; but in obedience to a law 

 which was not of its creating, it immediately commenced a 

 movement westward, nearly on the same line of temperature 

 as that of its origin. The great wave of emigration was di- 

 vided into two streams by the mountains of Central Europe, the 

 Teuton taking the northern, and the Celt the southern line ; 

 but it has followed on in a steady stream, alike over uninhab- 

 itable mountain ranges, deserts and fertile plains, across great 

 rivers, seas and oceans, until to-day it is building cities on the 

 western shores of the Pacific. The great westward movement 

 of this branch of the human family, age after age, has not been 

 in search of good land, for often the soil in the rear was better 

 than that in front. Neither has it often been to obtain better 

 political or religious privileges. To our view, whether we call 

 him Teuton, Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, or Yankee, he is a restless 

 rover. He loves his wife, and thinks there is no other like her ; 

 he loves his children, and knows they are the best in the land. 

 But though he has attachments for home, he makes himself 

 believe that beyond the distant mountain- top, or over the river, 

 there is a more fertile soil and genial clime than he possesses, 

 and where a livelihood, competence and wealth can be obtained 

 with little care and toil ; and the belief drives him forward. 

 This great western movement of one branch of the human 

 family is most surely in obedience to an immutable law and for 

 the good of the race, but as we view it in single cases or small 

 communities, it is generally without necessity or reason. 



