SOLON ROBINSON, 1843 361 



down your rail-roads and fill up your canals, or else we 

 can deliver wheat at your own doors for 50 cents a 

 bushel. 



I will not attempt to say what, but I will ask you, what 

 we can afford to raise wool for in a country where the 

 summer pasturage costs nothing, and in a climate where 

 the sheep will winter nine-tenths of the time upon rye 

 and blue grass pasture. 



What we can afford to raise beef for, you can easily 

 "cypher up on the slate," when I tell you that I can buy 

 calves at $1.50 each in the fall, and I can hire them win- 

 tered by contract for four years, at $1.50 each per year, 

 making four year old steers cost $7.50 each, and as fat 

 as grass can make them. 



I might go on with details ; but I do not think it neces- 

 sary. I think I have said enough to occupy all the space 

 that one individual should occupy in the pages of your 

 Transactions. 



Dinner at the next meeting of the N. Y. State 

 Agricultural Society. 



[New York American Agriculturist, 1:377; Mar., 1843] 



[January 25, 1843] 

 Messrs. A. B. & R. L. Allen : 



Well, and so you "hope to have three thousand guests 

 at an agricultural dinner at Rochester, at your next 

 State Fair." 1 Then let me tell you how, — you must 

 adopt the western fashion, and have a free dinner. It 

 is easily got up, and no one feels the expense. Let a few 

 of the spirited friends of these great holidays and farm- 

 er's festivals, in the vicinity of Rochester meet together, 

 a few weeks before the Fair, and appoint a "dinner com- 

 mittee," whose business it shall be to see that a suitable 

 spot of ground is selected, and tables and seats built of 

 rough boards, that any lumberman will lend for the oc- 

 casion, — and so will some crockery merchant, who desires 



1 See ante, 336 n. 



