1857.] Associated Effort — Agricultural Fairs. 407 



organized into one vast macliiao, working with the nicety and 

 and regularity of the watch, and moved by the one main spring of 

 a mighty and persistent will, to elevate man to that higher plane 

 of intellectual and moral life for which God designed him at the 

 creation. , 



llelitrion, Politics and Commerce have lone; recosrnized the value 

 of Association, and finally Agriculture^ the greatest of great worldly 

 interests, is beginning to feel its importance and is fust becoming 

 an iJistitution as well as an art and a science. 



Agricultural Societies are to be the civilizing enginery of the age. 

 Under their influence community will be linked with community, 

 nation with nation, as never before — the sterile plain and wilder- 

 ness be made to blossom as the rose, and the whole world reap the 

 peaceful fruits of a well-directed industry. 



But every Society must have times and places when and where the 

 individuals who compose it may meet, compare notes, and learn the 

 results of oft repeated experiment, and stimulate each other to new 

 endeavor. Now this is the office of Agricultural Fairs and already, 

 though of recent origin, they have contributed more to our vigor- 

 ous and healthy growth as an independent nation than will ever 

 result from the influx of gold from California and Australia com- 

 bined ; for through the spirit of energy awakened thereby in the 

 minds of scientific men and an intelligent yeomanry a multitude 

 of facts and philosphic deductions have been garnered together, 

 whose value infinitely transcends the whole material wealth of the 

 country. 



The siraplo sltow of the best developed breeds of stock, the high- 

 est results of inventive genius, and the best and largest products of 

 farm and garden culture for the pleasure of the senses is not, by 

 any means, the chief object — nay, it is the smallest part of it. The 

 Fair is eminently an occasion of thought. It is not simply the 

 husbandman's fruits and cattle and machinery that we see at the 

 Exhibition — we also see the man himself, who is infinitely greater 

 than all his products, and see the very process by which he succeeded. 

 And thus it is that we obtain new and numerous contacts with those 

 pure intellections which animate and move the world. A new ardor 

 is kindled by the praiseworthy eiforts of others ; a new spur is 

 added wherewith to prick the sides of good intent and a " noble 

 emulation heats the breast." — Wisconsin Farmer. 



