348 



crops aud whal rotiitjou of thoye crops are best adapted to their soil, 

 they pursue that rotation with a dGterminatiou of purpose Avith Avhicli 

 no accident or exigency is allowed to interfere. While the growth of 

 the A^arious root crops enters largely into their system of cultivation, it 

 is because experience has taught them that it is an essential item in a 

 proper course of rotation and conduces to the growth of wheat. Now, 

 while the root crop may or may not be congenial to your soil and 

 , climate, or may or may not conduce to the maintenance of your wlieat 

 crop, it is well that you should learn the lesson of experience. And I 

 here take occasion to suggest that moisture is the prominent character- 

 istic of the climate of England, and that there is no part of the United 

 States so dotted with lakes aud traversed by rivers as the State of Min- 

 nesota, and, therefore, perhaps, no part of it so well adapted to the 

 gTowth of wheat. 



There is a fitness of things in the rotation of crops which commends 

 it to our judgment. It is adapted to our necessities. We must have 

 bread, because it is the staff of life ; we must have meat, because it is 

 essential to the growth and strength of man ; we must have the power 

 of animals to do our work ; and we must have gardens and fruits to fur- 

 nish the enjoyments of life and the comforts of health. The wheat crop 

 supplies our bread ; corn enables us to make our meat ; rye, oats, and 

 grass to feed the animals which supply our labor ; and, therefore, it is 

 a part of God's plan of creation that these crops should alternq^te, and 

 that their successful growth should be dependent upon one another. 

 He is a daring man, and will ultimately be an unsuccessful farmer, who 

 runs counter to this plain dictate of Pro\ideuce. 



Hessian fly, midge, army-worm, and divers and nameless insects dep- 

 redate upon the wheat crop, aud in the Eastern States smut and mil- 

 dew prevail to a great extent, and we are prone to attribute these to any 

 cause which will relieve ourselves from the imputation of bad farming. 

 Our daily observation is that vermin always attack a poor and diseased 

 animal, and the analogy is perfect with regard to their depredations 

 upon the poor and worn-out earth. Exhaustion is productive of ver- 

 min, vermin of disease, disease of death. Again, we are too much in 

 the habit of treating the occupation of the farmer as a die cast upon 

 .the board of chance, to be consigned to the exigencies of time and sea- 

 sou ; when, on the contrary, all our work should be so performed atj to 

 anticipate time and season, and provide for their contingencies. 



There is one other subject to which I desire to direct your special at- 

 tention : the selection of seed. There is no more common idea than that 

 seed degenerates from long use. No idea is more erroneous. If the 

 general priuciiDle were true that vegetation degenerates by cultivation, 

 the world long since would have come to an end. The opposite conclu- 

 sion is true, that cultivation is the improvement and life of vegetation, 

 and that, by a selection <^ the best seeds, the best roots, and the best 

 animals, improvement is always the result. If a farmer wanting fifty 

 bushels of seed- wheat will run a hundred bushels through a winuowfng- 

 mill until he reduces them to the quantity required, he will improve his 

 crop from five to twenty per cent. This is not a new idea ; it has the au- 

 thority of ages, for Virgil, in his JBneid, and in his own peculiar hin- 

 guage, much more emphatically and beautifully expresses it : 



I have seen the largest seeds, tho' viewed vrhh care, 

 Degenerate, unless th' industrious hand 

 Did yearly cull tho largest. 



1 have neither time nor opportunity now to discuss the subjects of 

 stock-raising, wool-growing, and cheese and butter making, for all which 



