MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 399^^ 



naturally does, it will attract those who have ambition, force, patience 

 and intellect. That kind of farmer will wage war with unchangeable 

 facts, but work in harmony with them. He will get nature on his side 

 by way of preliminary. 



Summer travelers over this broad land, as they speed from county 

 to county and from State to State, can scarcely avoid observing that 

 each region has its special products, favored bj" climate, favored by 

 circumstances and strong enough to hold their own against marauders 

 We come to regions where the most delicate kinds of pear is a sure 

 fruit, and the car boys keep the trains abundantly supplied with them 

 in the season. Stick a pear tree down almost anywhere in Essex county, 

 Massachusetts, and it is pretty certain to do well. It may be too close 

 to a stone wall ; it may be crowded by an overhanging barn ; other 

 trees around it may be devoured by insects ; but the pear tree holds 

 its own and comes up smiling with a beautiful crop of pears every Sep- 

 tember. Here is a hint given by nature's own side, to anyone with the 

 requisite force, knowledge and patience. 



Move along westward to the borders of Seneca lake, and you will 

 come to counties where the plum is nature's favorite, and the pear is 

 seldom seen. Along in Ohio there are peach counties,' and soon we 

 reach the wondrous prairie world, which is so curiously adapted to the 

 production of Indian corn that no other region of the earth can com- 

 pete with it. It is so all over the land. There is probably not a coun- 

 try jn the United States, nor one acre in any country, which does not 

 lend itself more willingly to the production of some one thing than any 

 other county or acre. Every successful farmer among us owes his^ 

 success in great part to his working in harmony with these suggestions 

 of nature, our common mother. 



It is special farming that now invites men of the requisite ability ; 

 and it invites them to success, not sudden, but brilliant and sustained. 

 That dilapidated old barn spoken of above bore testimony to the ad- 

 vantage which farmers derive fro?n acting on a hint given by nature. 

 The original owner of the barn possessed a tract of salt meadow bor- 

 dering upon the sea, which yielded him 150 tons of good salt hay at 

 the only cost of cutting and getting it in. This hay imparts to the milk 

 of cows a disagreeable flavor, and is, therefore, of but limited use to 

 the farmer, and brings a low price in the market. The builder of the 

 barn bought cheap cattle in a neighboring State in the fall, and then 

 with his lofts filled with salt hay and his stalls with lean bullocks, he 

 amused himself and his boys during the long, New England winter by 

 converting his hay into beef. When the spring returned he had some 



