310 THE TIM BUXKER PAPERS. 



other property. Improved husbandry has more to do 

 with it than anything else, and in this matter agricultural 

 societies, papers, and books, have had their influence. A 

 good farmer put down in any community, raises the price 

 of land all around him. If he gets eighty bushels of corn 

 to the acre, and makes it worth three hundred dollars, his 

 neighbors will not long be content with twenty-five. Big 

 crops raise the reputation of the land. They tell every 

 year upon the purse of the owner, and when he wants to 

 add to his acres, and comes into the market to buy adjoin 

 ing land, he cannot buy at the old prices. He has been 

 all the while working against himself as a purchaser, and 

 raising the price of his neighbors farms. Just beyond 

 Shadtown there is a big plain, where any quantity ofland 

 could have been bought twenty years ago, for fifteen to 

 twenty dollars per acre. It was difficult for farmers to 

 get rid of it, even at these prices. It is now worth an 

 hundred dollars an acre. A fish oil factory in the neigh 

 borhood made cheap manures, and started a better style 

 of farming. Here in Hookertown, we have not only 

 cheap fertilizers, but a constantly increasing class of read 

 ing and thinking farmers, who are all the while putting 

 more brains into the soil, which starts crops faster than 

 bony fish. The Farmers Club is active, and Deacon 

 Smith and Mr. Spooner keep talking, and Seth Twiggs 

 smokes out a good many errors in the course of the year. 

 The draining and the manure, and the new tools and 

 seeds, tell their own story, and, as Jones says, &quot; every 

 body has a hankering arter land.&quot; Farms, like putty, has 

 riz. The Agriculturist subscription list has riz also, from 

 one to forty, and real estate agents, if they &quot;were fair, 

 would vote it a medal. Hoping they will do the clean 

 thing, I am, 



Yours to command, 



TIMOTHY BUNKER, ESQ., 

 HooJcertown, June 15th, 1868. 



