MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 387 



ing to the welfare of a branch of industry more productive, in most of the States, 

 than all others united, if some other Governors would cast about to see how the 

 laws affect it, and to suggest for the landed, as Avell as for more partial and lim- 

 ited interests, such enactments or modifications of laws as might tend to relieve 

 its products of unjust burdens, and to enlighten the pursuit of it in tlie field ; un- 

 less, indeed, it be that, as some seem to suppose, the laws have nothing to do 

 with Agriculture. 



It was made the duty of the Agricultural Surveyor to furnish the Governo' 

 with a summary of his survey, every six months, and at such other times as hi: 

 might require, to be published in such manner as he may deem expedient ; an'5 

 he was authorized to draw his warrants " to defray the expenses of such surveV: 

 and to enable the person so appointed to proceed in the execution of the dutiec- 

 that shall be required of him ; and pay the same to him, not exceeding the surri 

 of two thousand dollars per annum." 



Under this authority, Mr. IIenky Colman, appointed Agricultural Survey- 

 or, published four Reports, which, as has been truly said in the "Abstract" be- 

 fore us, " had a wide circulation in the country, and attracted favorable attention 

 abroad." Of the zeal and ability displayed in these Reports, and of their great 

 usefulness, we have repeatedly expressed, but not as strongly as we feel, our 

 warmest approval. We had lately the good fortune to procure a second-hand 

 copy in Boston, and intend to fortify our opinion of their great value by occasional' 

 extracts. It would be, with most readers, superfluous to add that the Surveyor 

 appointed by the Governor is the same Mr. Colman now on an agricultural tour iu 

 Europe, and whose personal observations there are read here at home with pleas- 

 xueand with instruction — except, perhaps, by some, of whom there are always and 

 everywhere too many, who know so much already that they have nothing more 

 to learn ; and who, because it is colder or hotter, or wetter or drier, in some parts 

 of Europe than in parallel latitudes elsewhere — and because, forsooth, labor is 

 cheaper there than in the United States, together with some other differences 

 of institutions and circumstances — therefore sagely conclude that we have nothing 

 to learn. from European books or essays on Agriculture, or descriptions of their 

 implements, machinery, or processes; as if the principles of mechanics, and of 

 chemistry, and botany, and civil engineering, as applied to draining, and road 

 and bridge making, the composition of manures and the constituent qualities of 

 soils and plants, &:c., were not the same in one country as another ! and as if the 

 American reader had not sense enough, in comparison of the modes and labor 

 employed in tillage in various countries, to make allowance for specified differ- 

 ences in the cost of these, and of food, &c., in a way to arrive at just conclusions, 

 and to avail himself of the lights which all admit science has of late years re- 

 flected on all the operations of husbandry in some parts of Europe, and especially 

 in England and Scotland, very far beyond what it is yet doing for the same branch 

 of industry in the United States. For ourselves, our temper is to take pride, 

 first and sincerely, in all that is the fruit of American skill and genius, if better, 

 or even as good, as to be found abroad ; but, at the same time, to consider no 

 place as too distant or too bad to go to for knowledge ! 



Moreover, while we exult in such names as Franklin, and Clinton, and God- 

 frey, and Whitney, in natural and mechanical sciences; and in such benefactors 

 and illustrators of American Agriculture, in its practice and literature, (ay, in its 

 literature !) as Taylor, and Madison, and Garnett, and Ruffin, of "Virginia ; and 

 Audubon, and Bachman, and Pinckney, and Poinsett, and Seabrook, and many 



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