Farming 81 



import them one year younger than these I have of Parsons 

 for but little more than one half what I pay him and at about 

 one quarter what Mr. Field paid for his. 



Later in his venture he wrote to Fred Kingsbury : 



SOUTH SIDE, Dec. 21, 1850. 



There is a good deal of building this winter. 



My trees are to arrive soon, so I cannot go to Connecti- 

 cut at present. More of them than I had calculated the man 

 could supply, about 5,000 pears. The nurseryman makes 

 me a present of 200 samples of his shrubs and trees. They 

 are also lower than they had been offered and promise very 

 fine. You have a nurseryman in Waterbury. I wish you 

 would ask him if he does not want some pears on pear or 

 quince stock, of the latter I have the finest lot ever imported 

 and will sell them lower than the regular nurserymen. I 

 shall have a few popular shrubs and trees of other sorts. How 

 would a few hundred go at auction in Waterbury? I have a 

 lot of (pot plants) cedar of Lebanon. 



In this letter, he adds : 



We are likely to have a Plank Road upon the island, 

 contract is offered at exactly the sum per mile I estimated 

 in an article upon the subject in the Staten Isler last spring. 

 Our society does well, I have near #20. worth of premiums. 



The society to which he refers, and of which he was 

 Corresponding Secretary, was the Richmond County Agri- 

 cultural Society. Early in 1850 the Board of Managers 

 issued an ' ' Appeal to the Citizens of Staten Island. ' ' In this 

 we read : 



4 'How is this, Fellow Citizens? Is the very best method 

 of Farming which can be adopted universally practiced 

 among us? Is it by any one of us? Is Agriculture, as a 

 science, sufficiently understood in our community? Can no 



