412 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



ploughing and working the surface of the earth with various 

 other implements, planting, reaping, mowing, threshing, fencing, 

 draining, clearing, manuring, and a countless number of other 

 operations, which are of annual occurrence in the management 

 of a farm. It embraces also, what, in the fashionable style of 

 the day is called hortirAiltiire ; for a gardener, or horticulturist, 

 is one who attends chiefly to the cultivation of fruits and flow- 

 ers, and is a farmer in miniature. By the scale of premiums, 

 which you, gentlemen, oflTer to-day for competition, it appears 

 that you consider agriculture as embracing the operations to 

 which I have alluded, and also the raising of stock, the fatten- 

 ing of cattle and swine, the cultivation of fruit and forest trees, 

 the making of agricultural implements, the productions of the 

 garden, the field and the dairy, and domestic and household 

 manufactures, too numerous to be named, but not the less 

 worthy of encouragement and reward. Within a few years 

 past, improvement in all the branches of husbandry has proceed- 

 ed with rapid and successful motion, partly by the agency of 

 agricultural societies, and partly by means of individual efl"ort. 

 The premiums proposed by societies, and the bounties ofl"ered 

 by the Legislature, have awakened ambition and stimulated en- 

 terprise. The success, which has followed competition, has 

 excited more powerful eff'ort, the benign eff'ects of which may 

 be seen in every direction. In many parts of the Common- 

 wealth, unwholesome swamps, filled with bogs, briers, and 

 stagnant water, the abode of annoying insects and noxious rep- 

 tiles, have been converted to rich and productive meadows, 

 yielding large and profitable crops of grass, grain and roots, for 

 the food of domestic animals ; fields, that had become sterile 

 and barren from long and constant use, have undergone a reno- 

 vating process, and now amply repay the labor of tillage ; new 

 and valuable kinds of grain and esculent roots and vegetables 

 have been introduced ; and wholesome fruits, of delicious fla- 

 vor, now enrich the grounds of the husbandman, in places, 

 where, not many years ago, there were only apples, which, to 

 look at, would almost set one's teeth on edge, cherries which 

 could not be eaten without the accompaniment of a distorted 

 countenance, and pears, the flavor of which might dispute the 

 preeminence of insipidity with a squash. 



