130 



N. Biddle's Address. 



Vol. VII. 



the Devons, probably the first domestic ani- 

 mals imported into New England, and who, 

 at the distance of two centuries, retain the 

 characteristics of the parent stock, with 

 whom its relationship is renewed by late 

 and numerous importations, fast walkers and 

 stout workers too. The Ayrshire, a small 

 round bodied, and compact race, easily kept, 

 and claiming to be adapted alike to the knife 

 and the pail. The Alderneys, a rawboned, 

 ungainly race, not easy to fatten, since all 

 its food goes to swell its copious and very 

 rich supply of milk. 



As to horses, our pursuits as farmers bring 

 us less in contact with the highest bred races 

 of this noble animal. Yet I am satisfied that 

 the horse is destined to have the full devel- 

 opement of his qualities in no country more 

 than this. 



He comes originally from a dry, warm cli- 

 mate, and a clear sky. He finds them here, 

 but they are wanting in the moist atmos- 

 phere and clouded skies and rich pastures 

 of England; and accordingly the highest 

 bred English horses require to be recruited 

 by foreign blood ; and already, by the stop 

 watch, they are outstripped by their descend- 

 ants here. 



We possess sheep of various kinds, and 

 in great abundance. Strange examples of 

 the caprice of popularity. When the Span- 

 ish troubles first drove the merinoes into 

 this country, they were high priced and high 

 fed, as if each had a golden fleece ; but they 

 could make no progress, till at last they lost 

 all imaginary value, became objects of dis- 

 like and even disgust, and now they are 

 universal. We have plenty of Merinoes, 

 and our present want is of the long wooled 

 Leicester breed, to cross with the Merino, 

 for the purpose of manufactures. With re- 

 gard to swine, the public favour seems to 

 decide in favour of the Berkshire, Hamp- 

 shire, Lincoln and similar stocks, the quali- 

 ties of which have been naturalized in our 

 own Chester county breed. And thus we 

 wish you to go round the whole circle and 

 see the variety and the beauty of these spe- 

 cimens, and then reflect how much more 

 economical it would be to stock our farms 

 with cattle superior in quality to what we 

 commonly see. In animals, as in almost 

 everything else, the best is, after all, the 

 cheapest, and the difference in the first cost 

 of a good and a bad animal, is soon made up 

 by the superior productiveness, upon the 

 same food, year after year. One of the 

 great advantages which the Society pro- 

 mises itself by this exhibition is, to place 

 within the reach of every farmer the means 

 of obtaining, at a small cost, the most val- 

 uable animals. 



Nor let us pass without notice this collec- 

 tion of roots, turnips, sugar beets, ruta baga, 

 mangel wurtzel, which ought to enter very 

 largely into our farming. It is strange how 

 things so lowly acquire national importance. 

 The best farming is that which will give 

 the greatest mass of sustenance to animals — 

 since the less land required for animals, the 

 more can be given for the maintenance of 

 human beings. That fine farming region, 

 England, had reached the limit of its power 

 of supporting animals — since it turned to 

 the root culture, it more than doubled, or 

 quadrupled its power — and now, odd as the 

 mingling of such dissimilar notions may 

 seem, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, 

 that England's power is based upon its iron, 

 its coal and its turnips. Then, that beet, 

 which the commercial jealousy of Napoleon 

 endeavoured to raise to the dignity of the 

 sugar cane, which at this moment, yields to 

 France more than sixty millions of pounds 

 of good sugar, and has now become so in- 

 corporated into the French agriculture, as 

 to divide the government of France between 

 the encouragement of the foreign sugarcane 

 and the domestic sugar beet. To us the 

 question is unimportant, since sugar is so 

 cheap in this country, as to leave to us the 

 sugar beet as an excellent food for our 

 cattle. 



Examine too, these ploughs. For some 

 thousand years men have been using the 

 plough, and its improvement has been the 

 companion of his own refinement. At first, 

 a mere sharpened stick, then, by degrees, 

 strengthened, then ironed, then a heavy 

 cumbrous engine, led on by four, six, ten 

 horses; then the refinement of simplicity 

 stripped it by degrees of these incumbrances, 

 a horse, a pair of horses, were successively 

 withdrawn, as the machine is rendered light- 

 er, till at last we have now reached almost 

 the perfection of that instrument in yonder 

 specimens. The great purpose of the plough 

 is to come as near as possible to the spade ; 

 not merely to open the sod, but to turn it 

 over, to make what was on top last year take 

 its place at the bottom this year, and rot, till 

 it is wanted. There are ploughs here which 

 perform that better than any ploughs in Eu- 

 rope, and there is one especial instrument 

 which we ought to remark, the subsoil 

 plough. Our ploughing is generally too 

 shallow. We scratch the surface, and then 

 extract it by frequent cropping; whereas, 

 if we could get lower down and loosen the 

 surface below, we should bring into play a 

 fresh soil, and almost double the extent of 

 available ground. Thus in light soils we 

 get fresh food for the root crops, and on the 

 clay soils we open the lower stratum, and 



