480 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



as language could, that it has not yet been found out by their 

 owners that potatoes and turnips crave potash, that clover and 

 peas want lime, that wheat and oats hunger for silex and phos- 

 phoric acid, just as voraciously as the Irishman in the kitchen 

 wants the potatoes, horses the clover, or children late home 

 from school the wheat ? 



Are there not certain triangular stains smirching the sides 

 of barns under the stable-windows, left there by manure-heaps 

 that took all weathers with no roof, which tell every passer-by 

 that these prodigal feeders, though they locked the barn doors 

 every night, and set traps for foxes, and sent constables after 

 the thief that stole their apples, forgot that the atmosphere has 

 a sly way of turning robber, as well as giver, — that the sun 

 and rain filch as well as fertilize, — and so did not shelter nor 

 fasten down, by boards and muck and forest leaves and plaster, 

 those volatile salts and gases which these noiseless marauders 

 were snatching up into the sky, — so much gold out of their 

 pockets ? You would hardly applaud the thrift of a manufac- 

 turer that throws away a quarter of his raw material. 



Are there no specimens of stock, in the yards and pastures 

 of these towns, rawboned and diseased, and lean as the leanest 

 kine of Pharaoh, — walking illustrations of the "anatomy of 

 melancholy," — which seem to show that the problem in their 

 keeping has been reduction to the lowest terms, and the mul- 

 tiplying of exceedingly vulgar fractions of beasts, or finding 

 the equation between the minimum of attention and the maxi- 

 mum of emaciation ? Is there none of this stock usurping the 

 place, and consuming the fodder, which of right belong to cat- 

 tle, that should be here in Dedham taking premiums, — stock 

 that has been badly selected, badly crossed, badly reared, — 

 incarnated, or rather inskeletoned libels on the whole law of 

 reproduction ? 



On the other hand, have you all discovered the real philoso- 

 phy and economy there is in feeding your cattle on pine boards ? 

 in other words, discovered that if you put them into a warm 

 stable, instead of letting them shiver on the north side of it, 

 all the drizzly and frosty weather of winter, you thereby pro- 

 vide fuel for their vital sustenance which the furnace in their 

 lungs would otherwise have to borrow from their stomachs, to 



