168 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



culture that live on this planet ; we have the best farmers ; we 

 raise the best pinks and roses, everything from an orchid to a 

 cucumber in perfection. We have the best market for the man 

 who lives on what he raises on his acres. We have within fifty 

 miles of Boston the most generous living people on the face of 

 the earth, a population that will live generously and who know 

 how to live. There is no gainsaying the fact. What you want 

 to do is to meet the demand which they make to the highest 

 degree. 



From the earliest records which we have in this country, we 

 have a continual repetition of the drought, drought, drought. 

 The very best and most fruitful lands, under proper con- 

 ditions, are oftentimes barren because of the drought. The 

 annual precipitation of moisture that is necessary for the 

 perfect growth of vegetation is from three to four inches per 

 month. If there should be in a month not more than one inch 

 it makes it impossible to obtain the best growth, and if there is 

 no water at all there is commonly a prostration of the crops. 

 An old farmer told me, a man seventy-three years of age who 

 cultivates the farm on which he was born, " Mr. Wilson, I have 

 in a long life been cultivating the soil exclusively for my sup- 

 port. There has not been a year that I can remember when, 

 during some month in that year, I have not been anxious about 

 my crops from the effects of the drought. I never knew what 

 it was to have perfect satisfaction in the cultivation of my fields 

 until 1 got water, a water trough with which I could supply the 

 deficiency of nature. I happened to be in a town where water 

 was introduced as a system for supply. The farmers soon got on 

 to the fact that irrigation was profitable in Massachusetts. One 

 used it, another used it, and in a very few years they exhausted 

 the supply. There was not enough for so many. Then they 

 were all cut off, but they had found that it was useful to have a 

 supply with which they could make up for the deficiency of 

 nature. They found by meter that they used two million gal- 

 lons in one year, for which they paid six hundred dollars, twenty 

 cents per thousand gallons." One who was educated up to the 

 point that water was useful and profitable and that he could 



