NEW ENGLAND FARMING. 41 



Now, where the sources of supply of stock for grazing and 

 feeding, are so good as they must be here, the farmer possesses 

 perliaps the most advantageous of all positions for bringing his 

 farm into a fertile and remunerative condition. Tiiose of you 

 whose experience is of the longest standing will not have to be 

 reminded that the great need of the agriculture of our older 

 States at the present time, is a more abundant supply of 

 fertilizing material. Manufacturers of artificial manures are 

 driving a better trade in New England, probably, than in any 

 other part of the country, now that the impoverished lands of 

 the South are mostly cut off from their reach. Tiiose of you 

 who are familiar with the printed treatises on agriculture, 

 from the earliest of the ancient writers down to this most 

 prolific century of books and papers and addresses, will not 

 have to be reminded that the great burden of their whole song 

 is Manure! Manure!! Manure!!! And as I run over the 

 journeyings of a summer spent among the best farmers of the 

 United Kingdom ; as I note the successes of the shrewdest and 

 most thorough of the cultivators of our own soils ; as I trace 

 back the files of the old " Genesee Farmer," the "Cultivator" and 

 tlie " Country Gentleman," in which I have an interest, personal 

 or hereditary, extending back for more than thirty years, 1 find 

 that what ' observation in England and Scotland teaches us 

 abroad is equally true on this side the Atlantic — that the care 

 and quantity of manure made may fairly be taken as a measure 

 of the profits obtained, — that with this as the first object sought 

 all other olyects are in turn accomplished, — in a word, that the 

 farmer's first and most important crop is that which comes out 

 of his barnyard ! 



And beyond this, my friends, it is the fundamental verity 

 and weight of this great fact, which first led the English 

 breeder to those improvements in cattle and sheep which we 

 have just been discussing, and of which you have had examples 

 on your show grounds to-day, in the several breeds there 

 exhibited, more than three thousand miles from the place of 

 their origin. To raise crops for the food of man, stock must be 

 fed and crops for their especial consumption produced ; and the 

 problem of securing that stock which might be fed to the 

 greatest profit, reaching its importance out of the primal 

 necessity experienced by the English farmer for more manure ! 



6 



