110 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



artificial every day, we settle down more satisfied to let it take its 

 own course. Yet we are by no means indifferent lookers on, while 

 the play is acting. We watch with deep interest the movements 

 of all the old machinery, and when any new is introduced, we re- 

 gard it with still deeper interest, to ascertain how it will work in, 

 cog for cog, with the old. We seem to live in the second edition 

 of the age of the pyramids — revised and somewhat improved, per- 

 haps — but an age when thousands must combine to build up those 

 structures which posterity will gaze at, and wonder, as we do a1 

 the huge piles on the sands of Memphis. That was an age o] 

 brute force, leaving vast records of what human strength could do 

 The improvement in this is, that science, and the knowledge o 

 the laws of nature, are superseding physical power, and steam if 

 made to do the labor of man. Thus the monuments which w( 

 shall leave, are those which, invisible to the eye, are built up u 

 the heart of every child that shall ever be born. 



It must be acknowledged that to this law of association, if WH 

 may call it so, is the present state of society to be attributed 

 and in no other place do the effects of this law show themselvfe<| 

 more plainly, than in the business of agriculture. We are per 

 fectly aware, that the benefits of association for the promotion am 

 improvement of farming, are generally attributed to the concomi 

 tant circumstances, such as the Fairs which are held annually, wit] 

 great excitement — the spirit of emulation aroused by premium 

 and the comparison of each other's products, &c. ; but we profesj 

 to look deeper, and account for it upon this great law that i ( 

 governing the age. Men will do great things in masses, wh^i 

 they will do nothing singly. But attribute it to what cause W'|| 

 may, nothing can be plainer, to a mere superficial observer, thai 

 the fact that since the institution of agricultural societies, a grea 

 improvement has been made in the art and science of farming 

 And if they continue to be conducted on plans commensurate wit) 

 the demands of improvement, we may safely congratulate our 

 selves upon the prospect of a still more rapid growth in prosperi 

 ty, and the attainment of no mean degree of eminence in agriculi 

 tural operations. 



The first agricultural society in the State of New- York, wa 

 organized on the 26th of February, 1791, in the Senate Chamber 

 in the city of New-York. Chancellor Livingston, Simeon De Witt 



