478 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of agriculture, but at the same time accrued an enlargement of 

 its spirit and motive. 



Of course, at the first, chemistry did very little with her 

 crucible, and mechanism comparatively little with its smitheries 

 and factories. Both have, probably, only begun their magical 

 economics yet. But it is none the less true, that in the simple 

 discovery of the fact, chemistry, along with geology and physi- 

 ology, has relations to farming, and could be made to help it, 

 in the bare establishing of that fact, was a grander crisis in 

 the history of this business than is likely ever to come again. 

 So in the demonstrated feasibility of labor-saving machinery, 

 after the wooden ploughshare and the live-stock threshing 

 apparatus of centuries, there was the turning of a corner, the 

 opening of a new page, the sudden light that always breaks in 

 with the sunrise of a fresh principle, which did more for you 

 than perhaps can be done again. So that if it is modest ever 

 to predicate such a thing of any interest, in a day so preg- 

 nant with wonders as ours, we might venture to declare, that 

 the grandeurs of reformation, the cardinal revolutions, and 

 the Lutheran age, in agriculture, are passed. 



"What, at any rate, is the precise direction of the efforts 

 wanted now, and demanded of you, as farmers, who, in culti- 

 vating the earth, mean to cultivate yourselves ? It will be 

 found, I suspect, that the answer to this question is as practi- 

 cal a theme, and as well worth your study, as any that the 

 proprieties of to-day could possibly suggest. We hear much 

 vaguely said of the need of enlightened farming — it has been 

 the topic of repeated occasions like this : it is worth in- 

 quiring, where, precisely, just at this time, that light should be 

 made to fall in. 



In the first place, the posture of New England farmers as 

 they are, exposes the need of rousing still further what may be 

 called the spirit of the profession. It has its own rights, 

 privileges, duties, and titles to homage. I remember, of course, 

 how the very festival that calls us together, the wide depart- 

 ments of your annual display, and especially the spacious and 

 convenient edifice now given up to the uses of your enterprise, 

 with similar gatherings enlivening other counties and States in 

 this part of the year, are proofs that this process of quicken- 



