156 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



largest amount of cash in hand for each current year, but for 

 permanent improvements and maximum fertility in every field, 

 possess themselves of sufficient faith in their profession to put 

 their capital into it, accept the aids mechanics and science offer, 

 bring every mental power to work in unison with their physi- 

 cal, and at the end of a score of years, they would at the same 

 time, have shown our defects and applied the remedy. They 

 would not only be richer in mind, honors and pocket, but their 

 county would be the Eden of Massachusetts. Where individual 

 examples have failed, their united influence could not but stir 

 up the " dry bones " of our old fossils, who, on such farms as we 

 first described, look with sovereign contempt at any innovation 

 upon broad back and hard muscle, and furiously hurl rude wit, 

 sarcasm and tobacco spit at " booklarnin'," and " book farmin'." 

 To what State can we more properly look for a true system of 

 agriculture than Massachusetts ? 



Can her farmers show results commensurate with those at- 

 tained in other pursuits ? Have those in this county expended 

 on their farms one tithe of the mental activity which has 

 dammed and bridged our streams, founded our institutions of 

 learning, or built and carried on our numerous manufactories ? 

 Can it be that we do not need it in a business which in its varied 

 manipulations combines the application of almost every science 

 and art? If by enterprise and industry, with skilled, scientific 

 thought and observation to guide, we can increase our crops, 

 develop and strengthen every latent energy of the soil, making 

 our farms attractive to refined taste, and thus productive of a 

 higher mental standard in our families and profession, it is not 

 only pecuniarily but morally wrong not to do so. For we are 

 not serfs to any prince or emperor, but as a Commonwealth of 

 free citizens, whatever increases the resources and fertility of 

 our lands, adds to our united prosperity. This subject cannot 

 be too strongly urged. Although presented in agricultural pa- 

 pers and lectures until it appears as one-sided as a mirror, still 

 our New England farms clearly prove the need and continued 

 need of these exhortations. Let us labor to bring our farms 

 back to their natural fertility, and to accomplish this, carry noth- 

 ing from our fields to the granary or the market without return- 

 ing its equivalent in fertilizing matter. 



In connection with this subject, the question of large versus 



