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Prince George Agricultural Society. 



Vol. XII. 



likely to become the prevailing occupation 

 of life ; and as population becomes more 

 dense, the necessity of subdividing lands, to 

 supply the increasing demands of agricultu- 

 ral labour, becomes more and more urgent. 

 Hence, in those countries where the farmer 

 is compelled by the force of circumstances 

 to restrict his operations to the same piece 

 of land, he looks beyond the primary process 

 of production, and seeks out new sources of 

 renovation, which the exhaustion of repeated 

 culture has rendered indispensably necessa- 

 ry. Under such circumstances the practice 

 of husbandry is more apt to flourish; and 

 great and varied improvements are almost 

 sure to take place, as necessity may require 

 their successive development. But in a new 

 and uncultivated country, where population 

 is scarce and land abundant, like that which 

 our Anglo Saxon ancestors found on this 

 continent, where nature had so lavishly be- 

 stowed her choicest gifts, abounding in rich 

 and fertile lands, covered with timber of 

 every variety; and requiring only the axe 

 of the husbandman to be brought under suc- 

 cessful tillage, the principles of scientific 

 and experimental agriculture, it might be 

 supposed would be not only but seldom re- 

 sorted to in practice, but might even be con- 

 sidered as utterly valueless. It is not at all 

 surprising then, that our ancestors on this 

 continent should have neglected the study 

 of scientific husbandry. The earth, when 

 cleared, yielded almost spontaneously to 

 their wants; and when exhausted nature 

 became weary of productiveness, new and 

 maiden soils, teeming with vegetable life, 

 were ready to send up their bounteous offer 

 ings. This practice of relying on newly 

 cleared lands, to supply the place of those 

 which had been worn out by cultivation, 

 seems to have been the settled course of 

 husbandry in this country, even down to a 

 period long since the revolution. It exists, 

 at the present day, as the established course 

 of culture in many of the western and south- 

 ern States of the Union. There are many 

 persons, and perhaps some now present, who 

 can recollect when it prevailed almost ex- 

 clusively in our own State; and indeed, we 

 are not without examples in this and the ad- 

 joining counties, of persons within late years, 

 leaving their homesteads and the places of 

 their nativity, simply because they had no 

 more lands to clear; and seeking-nevv homes 

 in the woods and forests of the west, where 

 alone they supposed could be found the true 

 elements of agricultural prosperity. But I 

 am happy in being able to say, this practice 

 no longer prevails. The pursuit of agricul- 

 ture has attained in this country as elevated 

 a character as it ever enjoyed in any other, j 



The formation of agricultural societies and 

 the establishment of agricultural journals 

 have produced the same results with us that 

 have followed their progress in other parts 

 of the world. The American farmer is not 

 a whit behind the English farmer in the 

 knowledge of those great properties of mat- 

 ter which science has developed, and the 

 hand of industry applied to the cultivation 

 of the soil. If the Englishman can look 

 down upon the "golden valley of Hereford- 

 shire," and exclaim in a spirit of patriotic 

 pride, here are the fruits of our industry and 

 here the evidences of our skill in the art of 

 husbandry; so too can we, with the same 

 exultation and delierht, point to the rich and 

 renovated fields of New England, for similar 

 evidences of agricultural improvement. Skill 

 has taken the place of ignorance; and by its 

 union with industry, brings forth its increase 

 no longer in dwarfish and starvling propor- 

 tions, but in all the fulness of gigantic exu- 

 berance. Scenesof desolation, and prospects 

 of dire and barren waste have been changed, 

 as if by magic, and in their places are now 

 seen rich fields of abundant verdure, pre- 

 senting in landscape to the eye, every thing 

 that is beauteous to behold, and to the appe- 

 tite, every thing that is wanting for the sus- 

 tenance of life. The hand of science has 

 lifted up the veil which hitherto obscured 

 our knowledge of the laws of vegetation; 

 and unfolded to our view those concrete 

 principles of production and re-production, 

 of which the earth was made capable, when 

 it came from the hands of its Beneficent 

 Creator. Unlike our unenlightened ances- 

 tors, we are no longer obliged to roam from 

 field to field, and from woods to woods, in 

 search of new and unexhausted soils, but 

 cleaving to our own beloved homes, and to 

 our own native spots, with all that tenacity 

 which nature has instinctively planted in the 

 human breast, and which it delights to grati- 

 fy — no matter how worn out by culture, or 

 exhausted of their energies, we can make 

 them to bloom again with all their original 

 fragrance, and to become redolent with more 

 than their original fertility. Such has been 

 the progress of improvement in the art of 

 husbandry, and such the beneficial results of 

 agricultural societies, and of agricultural 

 journals. 



With reference to the consumption of 

 breadstuff's in our own country, I believe it 

 to be much greater than is generally thought 

 to be. Take, fiir example, the article of In- 

 lian corn, which is certainly more exten- 

 sively grown, as well as more extensively 

 consumed, than any other article; and by 

 reference to the returns of the census of 

 1840, we may approximate to eomething 



