342 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



tedious. I hope the subject will not be allowed to drop 

 here, but that such meetings will be held ; and I shall see 

 much good resulting from them. 



With respect, Yours, &c., Solon Robinson, 

 Travelling correspondent of the American Agriculturist. 



To A Connecticut Farmer. 



[New York American Agriculturist, 9:95-96; Mar., 1850] 



[January 27, 1850] 



Your article in the January number of the Agricultur- 

 ist, has just met my eye.^ I cannot turn to the article 

 that has been the cause of your animadversions, for I am 

 upon a small island, on the coast of South Carolina,- and 

 my trunks and books are in Charleston. But I suppose 

 that I drew a picture, in my "flight," of some spots that 

 you would prefer to keep hidden from the world. That 

 was not my object. You seem yourself to think, that my 

 pictures were fictitious. But I assure you that they are 

 true ones. It is equally true, that I might have given "a 

 different complexion" to them; and I knew the "right 

 source" to inquire; and was "able to compare the past 

 with the present ;" for I was born among the rocks, in the 

 most rocky part of Connecticut. But I did not design to 

 show the bright side of the picture, nor did I show its 

 darkest side. There is, and has been, ever since I knew 

 the state, a miserable system of farming carried on there, 

 that is wholly unworthy of the present age of improve- 

 ment. There is a larger proportion of readers in this 

 state, than, perhaps, in any other ; but how many of them 

 read agricultural books or papers ? Do you teach agricul- 

 tural chemistry in your common schools? Have you a 

 state geologist, chemist, or public lecturer ? Do you gen- 

 erally subsoil your clay soil, or underdrain your thou- 

 sands of acres of cold, spongy side hills ? Are there not 

 thousands of "old-pond meadows" and swamps, yet un- 

 drained? Do not Connecticut farmers continue to barely 

 scratch the surface with the plow? And do they practise 



' See ante, 252 n. ' See "Mi-. Robinson's Tour — No. 18," post, 364 ff. 



