50 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



THE COMING FAEMEE. 



From an Address before the Norfolk Agricultural Society. 



BY JOHN QUINCT ADAMS. 



I wish you to assume with me that we have a farmer who 

 makes farming his business, and who, having a certain capital 

 to invest, selects land within ten miles of the city hall, to 

 farm, with a view solely to get from the land and his capital 

 and labor the usual return earned by an equal capital and like 

 industry in other investments in this vicinity. How can he 

 manage it? What new elements have made this problem a 

 substantially new one since this society was founded ? 



Twenty-five years ago, Boston, as many of us, gentlemen, 

 can very well remember, was a thriving little city, lying snug 

 in a small and compact territory, and surrounded, on the side 

 of Norfolk, at least, by tracts of sparsely-inhabited land, which 

 were in great part occupied by regular old-fashioned farms. 

 Even Roxbury in those days might almost have been called 

 an agricultural region. For ten years later the larger part of 

 Dorchester was actually farming land. Within ten years 

 West Roxbury rejoiced in one hundred and eight (108) 

 farms, which embraced seven thousand acres of her charming 

 territory. These places, to be sure, are now the city ; but it 

 is not that alone which has cooled their agricultural ardor. 

 They ceased to be agricultural not so much because they 

 were devoured, as because they were transfigured. Of course, 

 I speak generally. Market-gardening, floriculture, horticult- 

 ure, and some milk-farming, doubtless, still survive, and pos- 

 sibly a general farm or two in some remoter district ; but I 

 fancy that farming as a profitable pursuit is pretty well 

 finished in most of that region. So it is, I suppose, in our 



