434 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



But in order the better to understand this, let us go back 

 again for a moment and look at the condition of the county. 

 At one end of it is a city containing more than eighteen thou- 

 sand inhabitants, in which land is sold by the foot more fre- 

 quently than by the acre. Adjoining it is another town in 

 which the land is estimated almost as highly, for use in species 

 of cultivation almost too minute to be denominated agriculture ; 

 I mean the production of garden vegetables. Of course the 

 inevitable tendency of such a state of things is the rapid sub- 

 division of lands, and the substitution of what fairly deserves 

 to be called horticulture in small allotments, for the coarser and 

 more extended operations of a large farm. Another effect is 

 also visible — the practice of keeping cattle in extensive, wild 

 pastures, becomes unprofitable, where land is so valuable for 

 other purposes, and they must either be thrown back upon the 

 less populous region, or their owners must devise some new 

 mode of sustaining them within smaller bounds. Here it may 

 well deserve consideration, whether the practice of soiling be 

 not the most advisable, whatever may be the case elsewhere. 

 Be this as it may, the general fact can scarcely be disputed, 

 that the wants of the large population of this region are rapid- 

 ly out-running the ability to supply them from within their 

 own borders. Any one who rides through the rich region of 

 the three lower towns of Brookline, Dorchester, and Roxbury, 

 Avho watches the efflux from the great metropolis of a non- 

 farming, and yet of a consuming population, must soon be 

 convinced that if he desires to cultivate what may be called a 

 farm, and keep it for a reasonably long life time, he must be- 

 take himself to some part of the county further from Boston. 

 To his eye, as to all others in his way of occupation, those 

 towns must appear as markets for his milk, his butter, or his 

 veal, rather than as places of his residence, and still less as fur- 

 nishing competitors against him. Is not this a reasonable 

 ground for encouragement in the pursuits of agriculture in the 

 less populous towns ? Is there any likelihood that the increase 

 of production of the three places named, however stimulated, 

 will ever again keep up with the increase of demand for their 

 home consumption ? It is then, the agricultural portion of the 



