351 



Ionia County^ Mich. — Corn beiug plentiful, the condition of liog stock 

 is unnsually good. 



Cass County, Mich. — Hog cholera has appeared in several places, and 

 if it spreads hogs will be marketed before they are fnll fed. 



Muscati-ne County, Iowa. — Stock hogs are plentiful, but their condition 

 is rather below average, owing to last year's corn crop being deficient 

 in quantity and quality. 



Cowley County, Kans. — The estimated increase in the number of 

 hogs is 20 per cent. ; yet there is not one-hundredth part of what is 

 required by the demands of home consumption. 



Burleson County, Tex. — Fewer hogs, according to population, than 

 for the last twenty-five years. 



COMMISSIONER CAPRON'S ADDRESS. 



The following address was delivered before the Montgomery County 

 (Maryland) Agricidtural Society, by Hon. Horace Capron, Commissioner 

 of Agriculture, on the 14th instant, at Rockville, Maryland : 



Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow-workers in the Ancient Art of Agri- 

 culture : It is witli no ordinary pleasure that I revisit a place which has become 

 remarkaljle iu the rural annals of Maryland for triumphs of progressive agricultui'e, 

 for the results of the " high-pressui-e farming " decried by the Eip Van Winkles of twenty 

 years ago. I see in the conspicuous signs of thrift, of high fertility, of heavy produc- 

 tion, where once barrenness and desolation ruled the scene, " conhrmations strong as 

 proofs of holy writ," ocular and conclusive demonstrations, that you and I were right, 

 and the '• low-pressure " delvers in the old fields were wrong. 



Thirty years ago these smiling fields, now green and luxuriant at the close of a sum- 

 mer of unusual severity, were dry and bare, the soil hard and intractable, its appearance 

 indicative of that decay and decrepitude iu which •' the grasshoppers shall be a burden." 

 Few at this day can accurately estimate the utter poverty of the land. A few repre- 

 sentatives of those days, noble standard-bearers of the advance guard of improvement, 

 whom I now see before me, will bear willing testimony to its worthlessuess for agricul- 

 tural purposes. A simple anecdote of that period may serve to illustrate its character : 

 A well-known gentleman from the fine corn lands of Prince George's, commanding a 

 trqop of cavalry, passed with his company through a corn-field on one of these old farms, • 

 (the country roads of that period being only wagon tracks through the fields,) and 

 observing one of his troopers bending over upon his horse and cutting right and left 

 with his sabre, he demanded the cause of so strange au<l uusoldier-like a breach of 

 disciphne. " I am trying to reach the top of this com,'' replied the investigating cav- 

 alry-man. He might now ride through the same fields and find it eqnalh^ difficult to 

 reach uj) to the top of the corn. 



I feel a personal interest in these " old fields*' and the story of their improvement. 

 My first essay in their attempted renovation was in 1636, when I plowed fifty acres and 

 sowed oats and clover, hoping through the agency of plaster of Paris to secure a set- 

 ting of clover. The spring was favorable ; the oats sprouted, as did the clover ; a good 

 sprinkling of plaster was applied, but not one sprig of clover ever grew, and the oats 

 were harvested on the '' grab system '' then so common. For the benefit of young farm- 

 ers, who are presumed not to understand this mode, I will explain : The cradler makes 

 a sweep with his cradle, and as it rises out of the grain, he " grabs" it with the left 

 hand, and lays it down carefully iu a bunch to enable the Ijinder following after to find 

 it! In less than ten years these lands yielded 36 bushels of wheat per acre, 100 bush- 

 els of corn, and 2^ tons of hay ; and the crops had paid the expense of improvement ; 

 while the value, estimated at $10 per acre, had advanced to §60, and stands to-day at 

 double that sum, after large and profitable crops have been taken for so many years, at 

 small expense for fertilizers. 



Another tract, a swamp of sixty acres, which I succeeded in draining and improving, 

 soon bore a heavy crop of timothy, and was x>ermanently reclaimed, becoming, from 

 an unsightly and unhealthy morass, a beautiful aud productive meadow. 



Amid doubting aud criticism these improvements progressed, not at an enormous ex- 

 pense in the nature of a permanent investment, but paying their way in returns almost 

 immediate, and at the same time permanently advancing the value of the property iu 

 a degree beyond the gross expense of the work. I thank God that I have lived to see 



