60 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



patience. The mechanical inventor can repeat his experiments 

 every day or hour, but the experiments of the farmer often re- 

 quire not only weeks and months, but years, for their completion. 



Chemistry, and the laws of vegetable and animal life, in all 

 their relations to the inorganic world, are the intricate subjects 

 that claim his study now, and will continue to do so while seed- 

 time and harvest remain. Every new discovery in either of 

 these fields may increase the quantity and quality of his prod- 

 ucts, or render them more certain. And thus, every year, 

 manual labor on the farm will be utilized so as to secure more 

 abundant returns. Into these fields, New England agricultural 

 science has already been driven. While those with richer 

 lands have but to gather crops from soils teeming with fertility, 

 her farmers must master the very arcana of science, if they 

 would compete with their more favored neighbors. Every sec- 

 tion of the country must, in the main, work out a system of 

 agriculture for itself; but it will be in New England that much 

 of agricultural knowledge will be sought for, when the exhaus- 

 tion of soils and increase of population make agricultural 

 science the same necessity in the South and West that it now is 

 to us. And New England, sneered at as the land of ice and 

 granite, as not having land enough between her hills for respect- 

 able farms, will be ready to contribute of her abundance in this 

 department, as she has in every other department of science 

 and practical art. 



When I say that chemistry and the laws of animal and 

 vegetable life are the means of utilizing labor, I do not intro- 

 duce subjects beyond the power of every farmer to grapple 

 with successfully. It is not necessary that he should become a 

 Liebig in chemistry, nor an Agassiz in natural history. Such 

 men are pioneers, following nature into her dark chambers, but 

 opening the shutters so that henceforth all with common eyes 

 may see what those chambers contain. Accurate scientific 

 knowledge is an invaluable basis for all practical operations. 



But agriculture must be mainly built up by accurate obser- 

 vation. You may do something to correct your soils chemically 

 by the direct application of materials. But it is mainly the 

 chemical changes produced in the soil itself, that you must rely 

 upon. You must know what draining, what frequent ploughing, 

 what change of crops, what all possible conditions will do to 



