222 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



where the plough has barely skimmed over the surface, and lit- 

 tle or no aid has been given to Nature? Does not the waving 

 grain, by its light and unfilled heads, sometimes indicate the 

 deficiencies of the sower? Do not some mowing fields, brown 

 with their unprofitable herbage, and chequered with white weed, 

 mourn the absence of plaster, compost, or ashes? And when 

 we reflect that a single acre of enriched pasture is competent to 

 maintain a cow, is not our sympathy often excited for that use- 

 ful and most respectable animal, as well as for her neglectful 

 owner, when we see her threading her weary way through bar- 

 ren acres, where not a single blossom of white clover perfumes 

 the air, now roving through alder swamps, now climbing hills 

 covered with birches or brambles, at times lost amongst the 

 thicket, and recognized only by the tinkling bell ? 



Again ; let me ask, is not the county studded with deep mead- 

 ows and swamps, where the leaves and decaying vegetables, 

 swept down from the hills and plains by rain, have accumulated 

 for centuries ; where the sounding-rod discovers the trunks of 

 trees at the depth of twenty or thirty feet below the surface ? Are 

 not these mines of vegetable mould for enriching the upland ? 

 May they not be converted into luxuriant grass-fields and pas- 

 tures, almost insensible to drought, and enduring in their fer- 

 tility ? 



Are there not rocky hills, which have been wastefully de- 

 nuded of wood, unfit for cultivation, where the forest should 

 again be tempted to rise ; since it flourishes among ledges and 

 rocks, twining its roots around them, and drawing potash from 

 the decomposing granite? Would not such transition, from a 

 waste of rocks to wood-crowned eminences, embellish the coun- 

 ty, as well as provide timber and fuel? Is not the importance 

 of this apparent, when we consider the inducements offered by 

 groves for country-seats, and remember the high prices of ship- 

 timber, during a season in which a single white oak, of Middle- 

 sex, has produced one hundred dollars for timber? Neither 

 must we forget that the locomotives, which will traverse the 

 county when the railroads which are now chartered are finished, 

 will require the annual produce of at least forty thousand acres 

 of forest. 



