146 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The New-England farmer of the past, with his house to 

 bnikl, his unsubdued hills to make smooth, his valleys to 

 drain, and his children to clothe and educate, has been com- 

 pelled, not onl}^ to work, but to economize, till in many 

 case% he has acquired, and justly too, the reputation of 

 being, not only an " independent," but a " tight old farmer." 



He has felt himself compelled, in his battle of life, with 

 rough-cast acres to develop on one side and the wily trades- 

 man to contend with on the other, to hold on tightly to the 

 strings of his not over-plethoric purse. 



Farming in New England, even within my own memory, 

 would have been more appropriately designated, had it been 

 called, as it is now called at the South, " cropping ; " for 

 really, there was very little perfectly honest dealing with the 

 soil that was cultivated. Seeds were sown, and crops har- 

 vested and consumed, or sold ; but who ever thought of 

 paying any debts due to the land ? 



The agriculture of our fathers ma}^ have been justifiable 

 robbery, but it was robbery nevertheless. 



And had not the school-boys whom those early crops 

 helped to feed and educate learned of principles concerning 

 the cultivation of the earth of which their fathers never knew 

 and scarcely dreamed of. New England, ere this, might really 

 have been left " out in the cold." But the turning-point is 

 passed. The future is brightening for New-England agri- 

 culture. Men of other callings, realizing its importance in 

 many cases even more than do farmers themselves, because 

 possessed of the facilities for a wider observation, have given 

 it of late much of their attention, and are endeavoring to 

 make the cultivation of these worn-out Eastern farms a 

 financial success ; while many others are turning towards it, 

 impelled by an inborn love for old mother-earth. 



I have told you that I believe in New-England agricul- 

 ture. I do not forget that men have gone to the great West- 

 ern prairies with their large capital, which they have invested 

 in acres by the thousand and hundred thousand, in imple- 

 ments for tillage and harvesting which would drain almost 

 to emptiness some of our large agricultural-implement ware- 

 houses, in cattle-grazing upon government land, in herds 

 extensive enough to consume the feed in either of our large 

 Massachusetts counties in a single week ; and that the possi- 



