14 THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL 



shaping the destinies of this Republic, it is of the first importance 

 that our farms be developed and worked to their full capacity. 

 This is essential to our manufacturing and commercial interests, 

 for all forms of honest industry reach their highest successes 

 when they are most intimately associated, and to the greatest 

 degree mutually helpful. 



That our farms can hold their own against those of the great 

 West, and can in fact derive immense advantage from Western 

 competition is not a matter for doubt. 



To do this, however, intelligejice must both hold and drive the 

 plow. We must learn and use all the best methods of planting 

 and harvesting, the best modes of making, saving, and applying 

 home manuies, the best systems of farm management, of tillage, 

 rotation of crops, cattle feeding, handling of milk, tbat exist, or 

 that can be devised which suit our circumstances. 



In almost every direction in which the farmer prosecutes his 

 search for more light, he is confronted by a darkness which for 

 thousands of years has resisted the utmost eiforts of those who 

 have gone before him, and now equally resist his attempts to dis- 

 pel. He has but one i-esource left, and that is science, and to judge 

 from the brilliant successes which for the last twenty-five years have 

 fairly crowded each other in our recollection, this resource is 

 equal to the emergency. In fact, now that all other industries 

 have recognized the potency of this means of advancement, the 

 Eastern farmer must either make use of it in self-defence or be 

 driven to the wall. 



Science is from its nature peculiarly adapted to flourish among, 

 and to make flourish a free and aspiring people. Science is not 

 necessarily an aristocracy of intellect that condesceuds to dole out 

 the crumbs of knowledge to the common herd, but is an organiz- 

 ation of all available forces for the pursuit of knowledge. 



The citizens of Connecticut are, separately, as mere individu- 

 als, nearly powerless to maintain peace, order, decency, education, 

 justice, rights to property, or any of the fruits of civilization. 

 But the citizens of Connecticut, organized by the machinery of 

 town, county. State, and Federal Government, and by the institu- 

 tions of education and religion, not only are able to possess their 

 individual property, rights and enjoyments, but are able through 

 legislation, yearly to attain a fuller measure of prosperity and 

 hap2:)ine8s, as well as a higher capacity for enjoying these bless- 

 ings ; are able also to exercise a magnificent hospitality to the 



