FORAGE CROPS IN NEW ENGLAND. 149 



cheese, and all of our sugar; while the milk sold in our 

 cities is much of it produced from purchased foods. 



We have been so often told that New-England soil is 

 unworthy of cultivation, that many of us have come to 

 believe it. The interested speculator in Western land will 

 tell you that a man who knows what he is about cannot 

 afford to take a New-England farm of ordinary quality as a 

 gift. 



From my own experience and extended observation among 

 intelligent farmers from Rhode Island to Canada, I think I 

 may say that a man wlio does know what he is about may 

 with safety purchase almost any New-England farm ; and if 

 he pays only what the same value in buildings, necessary 

 fences, and pure water, would cost him at the West, the land 

 itself will cost him little, if any, more than nothing. 



What New-England soil most needs is men who have 

 faith to cultivate it ; and there is plenty of evidence that 

 such men are becoming more numerous, and that the num- 

 ber will increase, as agricultural knowledge increases, until 

 New England shall be noted, not only for being the birth- 

 place of great and good men, but also the home of those 

 whose love is too strong to forsake her. 



As I know comparatively little of farming, except what I 

 have learned by experience, I hope I may be pardoned, while 

 treating the subject before us, if some of the every-day opera- 

 tions which I am now carrying on shall appear somewhat 

 prominent. 



You know that different individuals may have a common 

 aim or end without necessarily approaching it hj the same 

 path. You know there are men now at work, as they 

 believe, for the common good, who are striving by all the 

 power and knowledge they possess to perfect the dairy cow ; 

 and you know that some very astonishing results have been 

 reported. That over seven hundred and fifty pounds of 

 good butter can be made in one year by a single cow, that 

 produces a calf in the time, is a statement, which, had il 

 been made a few years ago, would have found no believers ; 

 and even now it is quite possible that as many dairymen can 

 be found doubting as believing it. But allowing that these 

 reports of large yields are correct, and even more, that the 

 possible yield from a single cow has never yet been reached. 



