AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 133 



fertile principles and thus are in greater need of all the assist- 

 ance that science or other helps can bestow. 



OBJECT OF THE SOCIETY IN GENERAL. 



It will be enough to assume that its principal aim will be, as 

 it ought to be, the improving of agriculture ; of the practices of 

 farmers, that they may be led to adopt that system of husbandry 

 that will conduce most to their own prosperity and the good of 

 the community. The society should exist to the end that no 

 farmer shall pursue a sort of farming less profitable than his 

 neighbor. While a single one of us is following out in practice 

 ideas which are inconsistent with the best notions of husbandry, 

 then is our community less wise and less rich than it ought to 

 be. As the Roman emperor provides that every citizen shall 

 be a trained soldier, so should our agricultural society and 

 every patron of husbandry, every one who would raise our ma- 

 terial prosperity to all the height that is attainable, so work as 

 to encourage the using of every acre to the best purpose, and 

 every farmer to embrace as reasonable views in his art as may 

 be forced upon him. 



To the degree that a society has sprung from the exigencies 

 of the agricultural situation will largely depend the definition 

 or direction of its work. Some may be considered as destruc- 

 tives of old time, erroneous notions ; others, again, feel it to be 

 their mission to build anew, to seek the introduction of the 

 most recent improvements in culture, in tools, in domestic ani- 

 mals and plants. But all societies will occupy to some extent 

 both positions, though the one or the other will naturally take 

 prominence. 



If it so happen that the society shall be able to demonstrate 

 that certain fields and soils are unfertile, and unworthy of the 

 labor that is being spent upon them, then the society will do 

 good service by making the facts patent. Labor wasted may be 

 directed to new channels, where it will receive reward. If I 

 can discover to a man who is throwing away his labor and ill 

 using his energies, by clinging to land that has already given 

 all its life's blood, so to speak, and has no longer anything to 

 give, and induce him to quit the land and bestow his labor upon 

 other land, or lead him into the shop, or ship, or trade, or any- 

 where where labor is useful and is requited, then do I useful 



