290 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



for more attractive localities, and the work on their 

 farms being now done mainly by foreign-born em- 

 ployes. As a general rule, the boys first wandered 

 off, leading the girls only the alternative of following, 

 or dying in maidenhood. Marked diversities of race, 

 of creed, and of education, have thus far prevented 

 any considerable intermingling of the Yankee with 

 the foreign element by marriage. And what is true 

 of New England is measurably true of our own 

 State. 



I have not intended by these observations to com- 

 bat the assumption that our people too generally 

 prefer other employments to farming. The obstacles 

 to effective modern Agriculture that is, to agricul- 

 ture prosecuted by the help of efficient machinery- 

 presented by that incessant alternation of rock and 

 bog, which characterizes New England and some 

 parts of New York, I have already noted ; and they 

 interpose a serious, discouraging impediment to agri- 

 cultural progress. A farm intersected by two or 

 three swamps and brooks, separated by steep, rocky 

 ridges, and dotted over with pebbly knolls, some- 

 times giving place to a strip of sterile sand, is far 

 more repulsive to the capable, intelligent farmer of 

 to-day than it was to his grandfather. So far as my 

 observation extends, there are more New England 

 farms on which you cannot, than on which you can, 

 find ten acres in one unbroken area suitable for plant- 

 ing to Corn, or sowing to Winter Grain. Hence, 

 Agriculture in the East will always seem petty and 



