40 TEE SEW AG1UCULTUKE. 



and also, that to attempt to render lands productive to a degree of 

 profit, not only calls for an expenditure of a considerable amount 

 of capital, either in money or labor, but that " irrigation belongs, in 

 fact, to a highly advanced condition of agriculture, and can only 

 be applied to land of high value or capacity in the hands of intelli- 

 gent owners." 



We have alluded on previous pages to the depressions of spirit, 

 not to say discouragements, experienced for years in pursuit of 

 what seemed to the world a phantom. While we had found, here 

 and there, a friend among the more eminent public men of our 

 country, such as Hon. Warner Miller, Hon. John Sherman, Hon. 

 Henry M. Teller, and it gives us pleasure to say, General Chester 

 A. Arthur, who, reading patiently letters addressed to them at 

 length upon the subject matter of our discoveries, turned away 

 from public and private duties to give ear to what the world at 

 large deemed an illusion we except Hon. C. R. Earley, whose paper 

 on fungus will be found further on in this volume, also Hon. T. L. 

 Minier of Elmira, Hon J. H. Selkreg of Ithaca, and Hon. Augustus 

 Frank of Warsaw no expression could we get from anybody calcu- 

 lated to encourage us in the work we had undertaken. Among 

 the above named gentlemen Senator Sherman alone was an experi- 

 enced farmer. General Benjamin Butterworth, Commissioner of 

 Patents, gave patient hearing, and reading our letters, encouraged 

 and cheered us by pleasant words doing the heart good. 



When therefore on November 29th, 1883, we received from Hon. 

 William M. White, President at that time of our New York State 

 Agricultural Society, a letter unreservedly .endorsing our system, 

 words fail to express the satisfaction we experienced. We had 

 known Mr. White a lifetime, and had found him standing squarely 

 by our side for upwards of a quarter of a century, a disciple of 

 Horace Gi-eeley, in advocacy and defence of the more advanced 



