404 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



It directs his labor to the most economical results, and leads 

 him to deal with his exhausted land as the skilful physician does 

 with his sick patient. He neither guesses at the disease, nor 

 applies the remedies at random. 



In the knowledge of the soil thus obtained, in the adaptation 

 and rotation of crops, and above all, in the saving, preparation, 

 and use of manures, and the analysis of their properties, we 

 have made a decided advance, and one based upon right prin- 

 ciples. That much is yet to be done, before the soil of Massa- 

 chusetts will be brought to its maximum fertility, is true. The 

 returns of 1840 show the average yield of the upland mowing 

 of the State to be but little over three-fourths of a ton to the 

 acre, while 1,210,154 acres of pasture land are set down, as 

 capable, with the after feed of the farms, of keeping but 263,- 

 560 cows, or an average of more than four and a half acres to 

 a cow. 259,038 acres of tillage land yielded but 3,705,261 

 bushels of all the kinds of grain returned, or a little over four- 

 teen bushels to the acre. By a singular oversight, however, the 

 root crop is entirely omitted in the returns required. The arti- 

 cle of potatoes alone would add very much to the product to 

 be credited to the tillage land. Still these figures show that 

 the soil had not then been brought to anything like its maxi- 

 mum fertility. I believe the forthcoming returns will indicate 

 an important advance towards this result, in the last ten years. 

 Much undoubtedly remains to be done. But proper knowledge 

 is now attained, or the spirit of inquiry excited, and the means 

 of acquiring information within reach. Enterprise is begin- 

 ning to awake, and the well directed labor of the farmers, stim- 

 ulated by increased demand for agricultural products, following 

 necessarily upon an augmenting population for the next twenty 

 years, will bring the cultivation of the State up to something 

 like its capacity. I have no idea that the competition of the 

 west, brisk as the ease and rapidity of modern transit have 

 made it, will lay the fields of Massachusetts waste. It must, 

 it will be met by high farming, upon economical principles. 

 Relying on the natural fertility of soils, the victory is theirs. 

 Opposing to this, land, brought to its highest capability by the 

 scientific application of those adventitious aids, a dense popu- 



