98 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



means of travel, of intercommunication ; how they have tun- 

 nelled mountains, bridged rivers, filled up valleys, opened new 

 avenues for the outlet of the pent-up industry of the crowded 

 portions of the country, and have created wealth by bringing 

 into cultivation millions of acres of virgin soil, covering them 

 with the vine and grain and untold herds of cattle and sheep 

 and horses, gathering villages and towns and cities, rearing 

 school-houses and churches and factories ! These new places 

 are tributary to the support of the older portions of the country. 



A Massachusetts farmer need not be troubled nor repine at 

 his hard lot when he looks upon the mammoth corn and 

 squashes and pease and peaches which are produced in Kansas 

 and California and other new States. Size is power, other 

 things being equal. The big tree of Calaveras county, Califor- 

 nia, one hundred feet higher than Bunker Hill monument, 

 whose first branch is two hundred feet from the ground, excited 

 the wonder of our distinguished friend, as he told us last year, 

 but I never yet heard him say he would like to see such a tree 

 growing on his plantation. So at the great fair at Lowell, the 

 other day, they who looked upon the fat woman who weighed a 

 thousand pounds, were none of them desirous to take her home. 

 It is not by the size of the farm so much as it is by the labor 

 and manure bestowed upon it, and its proximity to a market, 

 that its profit is determined. I have seen on a farm in Califor- 

 nia a thousand bushels of pease lying on the ground to be 

 devoured by pigs, or to rot, because there was no better use for 

 them. A farmer in Norfolk County would know what to do 

 with them. 



It will be a long time before these wonderful farms of which 

 we hear and read, and which some of us have seen, will become 

 of that homelike character belonging to our New England 

 farms. I have travelled over one of those famous farms. Its 

 extent was 71,000 acres. It took two days to drive through it, 

 stopping as we went and returned, to examine but seven of the 

 butter manufactories ; for the farm was divided into twenty- 

 one dairy farms, for the manufacture of butter. To each farm 

 was allotted between sixty and seventy cows. The buildings 

 were furnished, and the farm and the cows were leased to the 

 farmer for $25 a year. 



But the owner of this immense plantation, and of more than 



