398 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



They have learned that, " we never before saw it after this 

 fashion," is no answer to modern suggestion in farming more 

 than machinery. They have seen that a farmer may be better 

 educated, a more scientific man than in days gone by, and that, 

 in the raising of crops, as in that of weights, this knowledge 

 is power ; that it is as valuable to know the analysis and prop- 

 erty of soils, as how to place the lever. They realize that 

 science is a better guide in agriculture, than either imitation or 

 conjecture, and that its results are as available in rearing the 

 crop, as in transporting it to market ; in tilling the soil, as in 

 spinning or weavhig its products. They are convinced that, in 

 the cultivation of the earth, no more than in any other pursuit, 

 '' can the blind lead the blind," without both "falling into the 

 ditch." Inherited prejudice yields to acquired knowledge, and 

 right gladly does the subject receive the new sovereign. It is 

 demonstrated that scientific education neither weakens the 

 muscles, nor contracts the sinews of the farmer ; that he will 

 not work less because his labor is better directed, or his strength 

 put forth under better guidance. He is not a poorer ploughman 

 who makes the centre draft plough do the ancient work of his 

 back and bones, nor he a worse cultivator, who saves the exper- 

 iments of ignorance, by the deductions of accurate learning. 

 We have been told, by moral philosophers, of the difference 

 between a farmer and a man on a farm, but in the creed of true 

 husbandry, these two are one. To this duality the great pur- 

 suit of human life is as progressive as either of the arts that 

 minister to its wants. He feels that science may as certainly 

 guide the hand that plants or prunes the tree, as that which 

 speeds the lightning message across a continent ] that it is not 

 less useful to him who ploughs the land, than to him who 

 ploughs the ocean ; to him who extorts from the reluctant sur- 

 face of the earth its treasures, than to him, who, for them, ex- 

 plores her bosom. 



The creation of this belief, as well as the desire for higher 

 knowledge among Massachusetts farmers, has been mainly the 

 work of this century. It is under the developments of this 

 period, that they have learned that farming comes by observa- 

 tion and study, and not by instinct, and hence, is capable of 



