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iheir courage and resolution, and dispose them to volunteer 

 their most vigorous efforts in your service. Your interest, 

 as well as the dictates of humanity, require that you abstain 

 from all cruelty and abuse, and that your dominion over 

 them be tempered with lenity and kindness. 



To carry into effect the objects of your association, and 

 give to your occupation all the improvements of which it is 

 susceptible, will require the unremitted energies of your 

 mind, as well as much vigorous bodily effort. Agriculture, 

 like all arts and sciences, is progressive, and must never be 

 suffered to rest, or retrograde. Your observations must be 

 made with accuracy, and your researches parsued with ar- 

 dor. Placed in a country containing a great variety of soil, 

 in a climate mild and healthful, under a government which 

 can impose no burdens on you without your consent, owners 

 of the land you occupy, furnished with the most approved 

 implements, and having for your guide the experience of 

 former ages, and the means of making new experiments 

 under the most favorable circumstances, it would be strange, 

 " passing strange," if you made no advances. I have said, 

 that heretofore, the sciences held no fellowship with agri- 

 culture. A better day has began to dawn upon that long 

 neglected occupation. Men of genius and learning have 

 devoted their talents to lighten the burdens of the laborer, 

 and give success to his efforts. As the powers of nature 

 begin to be developed, and its laws are better understood, 

 difficulties diminish and experiments succeed. The sci- 

 ences have already done much to aid your cause, and may 

 be expected to do still more. A new era has commenced, 

 in no longer confining science to the cell of the monk, and 

 the chamber of the philosopher, but in communicating it to 

 the world at large, and applying it to useful and practical 

 purposes. The discoveries of the geologist, and the experi- 

 ments of the chemist are spread before you, through the 

 agency of the press. Much mutual benefit may also be ex- 



