MR. PAYSON'S address. 11 



ion has long ago settled this point against them. Are they better 

 cows ? It is generally conceded that the Durham short horns are 

 not. Some indeed talk learnedly in their favor, but it is very much 

 on the same principle that an imported dandy with neither "wit, nor 

 words nor Avorth," makes a greater impression in some circles, than 

 he, who possesses all that the other lacks, but was so unfortunate as to 

 spring up in a country, where all men are said to be born equal. But 

 no matter whether you have Durhams, Devons or Ayrshires, so long 

 as they are not well fed and cared for, you will have no better 

 cattle, than that ill-favored native stock, which in many places, like 

 the lean kine of Pharaoh, seem to be forsaken of God, and abused 

 by man. Particularly is it the case among those men who for dis- 

 tinction's sake, may be called salt-hay farmers, — and not inappro- 

 priately so termed — for if there is any vegetable product upon which 

 they set their hearts more than another, it is the unreclaimed salt 

 natural growth of unreclaimed salt marsh. 



Those of us who come within this class, make no improvement, 

 and can make none. Our farms except perhaps a few acres about 

 our dweUings, diminish in value. We plant but little, for although 

 the ocean is upon one side of us, and rich peat bogs on the other, 

 both ready to furnish an inexhaustible supply, we have little manure. 

 We deny our cattle the benefit of scanty litter, for there is nothing 

 in the shape of fodder, that cattle fed on salt-hay will not greedily 

 devour. Our meadows capable of being easily reclaimed, and made 

 as fertile almost as the prairies of the West, remain as they were a 

 hundred years ago. Every year the unchecked clumps of bushes 

 and briars are making greater inroads upon our open pasture lands. 

 Stone walls carefully built by our ancestors, which time has 

 shattered, are hastily and slovenly bolstered up to answer the demands 

 of the present day, while the worthless shrubs which hedge them in, 

 are preserved as a sort of heir-loom for the benefit of posterity. The 

 time best suited for reclaiming our fresh meadows, for collecting ma- 

 nures, and for the general improvement of our lands is neglected. 

 Still we are not idle, but in doors and out, at this season labor is un- 

 profitably increased. The dawn of day finds us three, five or ten miles 

 from home, engaged in our favorite business. And why do we turn 

 night into day? Not from choice but necessity. For be it known, 



