94 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



AGRICULTURE IN EUROPE. 



From au Address before the Plymouth Agricultural Society. 



BY CHARLES G. DAVIS. 



Many Englishmen and many Americans carry England or 

 America with them as they go abroad, and return with very 

 little besides what they took away. But some of us who remain 

 at home, think that we have stricken out a new path, and can 

 learn nothing from the old countries ; forgetting that human 

 nature and physical nature are essentially the same everywhere ; 

 that all progress and civilization are merely products of the 

 past ; that we have no past ; and that the past is across the 

 ocean, where science and experience have been garnering fruit 

 for many centuries. I saw the cotton plant near Naples, fur- 

 nishing raiment and comfort for man upon soils formed of the 

 debris of the volcano which had overwhelmed cities and 

 destroyed a whole people. Those ruins and those ashes thus 

 symbolized a great law, that the present and the future flour- 

 ish upon the experiences, failures, the debris, nay, the ruin 

 of all which has gone before, just as you enrich your fields from 

 the off-scourings of life and carcasses of the dead. 



Passing by, then, all tliat we learn to avoid from the experi- 

 ence of the past, which in other words is the experience of the 

 old countries, what, as farmers, may we learn to adopt and imi- 

 tate ? To me the first, most striking and impressive lesson was 

 what I may best express in the word " Thoroughness ; " and 

 first in thoroug-h culture. The advantage and necessity of 

 thorough culture are so apparent in Europe, and theoretically 

 so well recognized here, that I will not enlarge upon them, but 

 content myself with stating that whatever is considered worth 

 doing is worth doing well. The people have learned to act 



