52 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



gained by a wider and more liberal study of agricultural 

 science, and the direct practical application of such science 

 to the treatment of their soils. For if true farmers they be, 

 I cannot conceive that they would be willing to exchange 

 the plough and the sweet odor of field and wood, the 

 varied, cheerful music of nature, which fills and blesses the 

 country air, the secure quiet of their homes, their fields of 

 ripening corn, their sheaves of golden wheat, their ruddy 

 apples, the mellow fruit of their orchards, their rich crops of 

 yellow grain, their mown lands, glittering with sun and dew, 

 their verdant pastures, ftnd their groves, God's first temples 

 of unsurpassable "architecture, 



" Their rills melodious, pure and cool, 

 Their meads with life and beauty crowned," 



their majestic oaks and beautiful elms and trees of thou- 

 sand kind, their herds of lowing cattle and flocks of gen- 

 tle sheep, their mountains, valleys, hills, the glory of their 

 early morns, the gorgeous beauty of their setting suns, the 

 radiant shine of their harvest moons, the fantastic brilliancy 

 of their autumnal leaves, — for all the false and fleeting pomp 

 and circumstance, the tinselled dazzle and the cumbrous 

 splendor, of fashion and the town. 



