ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE. 209 



ADDRESS ON AGRICULTURE, 



Delivered, by request, on tJie Eighth of October, 1846, before the Agricul- 

 tural Society of Worcester, Mass. 



BY JOHN S. SKINNER. 



WoacKSTKB, Mass. September 1, 1846. 

 John S. Skinner, Esq. 



Dear Sir : I have the pleasure to communicate to you the request of the Committee of Arrangements 

 of the Worcester County Agricultural Society, that you would do them the honor to deliver a public 

 Address to the Society on the day of their approaching Cattle-Show and Exhibition of Manufactures, the 

 8th of October next. It is highly gratifying to me to be made the medium of conveying the expression of 

 their wishes to you, and I would respectfully add my own desire that you may find it convenient to com- 

 ply with the application. 



I am, Sir, with great respect, ycur most ob't servt. 



JOHN W. LINCOLN, 

 Cor. Secretary Worcester Co. Agricultural Society. 



John S. Skinner, Esq. 



Dear Sir : I am desired by the Committee of Arrangements for the Cattle-Show and Exhibition of Manu- 

 factures by the Worcester County Agricultural Society, to express to you their grateful acknowledgments 

 for the very useful and instructive Address delivered by you to the Society this day, and to request of you 

 the additional favor that you would be pleased to furnish them a copy of it for publicatioo. 



For the Committee, 



JOHN W. LINCOLN, Chairman. 

 Worcester, Sth OUober, 1846. 



How may I hope to justify my acceptance of the invitation with which you 

 have honored me to appear here, in the very heart of the old Bay State, to dis- 

 course about Agriculture to her practical farmers ? Ay, even to the farmers of 

 old Worcester, whose intellectual and physical energies have so well triumphed 

 over a rugged and churlish soil, and a climate certainly not the most congenial to 

 the growth of the great staples of agricultural industry? 



To expose to deserved ridicule the most irrational enterprises, we have some- 

 times heard them compared to the folly of him who would go with coals to sell 

 at Newcastle ! But who ever, till now, actually undertook anything so unprofit- 

 able and extravagant ! Yet, the story may have reached you of a speculating 

 genius of the " universal Yankee nation," who amassed a large fortune by taking 

 a cargo of warming-pans to sell in the West Indies ! Happening to arrive just in 

 the nick of time, when the sugar planters were boiling their cane, he took off the 

 tops of his warming-pans, and there he had, I guess, the best sort of ladles to dip 

 up the cane juice, and cullenders to strain off all its impurities. Would now that 

 I could dip up something from the mass of agricultural materials worthy of your 

 consideration, and so divest it of all error and humbuggery as to present you 

 nothing but the pure grains of useful practical knowledge. 



I say of useful practical knowledge, for, to tell the naked truth, the community 

 has become tired of hearing our professional orators, to whom farmers are so much 

 accustomed to look, commending Agriculture in stereotype phrases for its antiquity, 

 its dignity, its universality, ay, and even for its honesty ! They take us back 



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