2 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



sea-shell vibrates to the listening ear with the roar of its far-off 

 ocean home, passes, in thought, from the farmer's herds in the 

 enclosures of the fair-ground back on the line of the centuries, 

 over the slow migrations from the East, upon which these faith- 

 ful animals have been the indispensable companions and servants 

 of our race, and finds in the associations of the day the spirit 

 of a hoar antiquity. Cattle of their kin went with Israelites 

 through the divided waters ; they trod the threshing-floors of 

 Judea ; they were the flocks the shepherds tended, who saw 

 the risen star of Bethlehem. 



It is not, however, so generally considered that agriculture, 

 from the necessity of fixed habitations to which it gives rise, is 

 the foundation of our civilization. The permanent home which 

 agriculture establishes marks the civilized man ; with this comes 

 the stable social order, the civil polity, the sentiment of country, 

 the record of history, the gathering accumulations of progress 

 by successive generations and the durable architecture of reli- 

 gion and the state. No roving race could build the Pyramids 

 or the Parthenon. The ancient Greeks, habitually contrasting 

 their condition with that of the wandering Scythians of the 

 North, well knew the ground of their preeminence, and venerated 

 Demeter, the divine genius of agriculture, as the founder of 

 civilization. What wonder, then, that on the days of her high 

 festival, a people proud of their beloved Athens, the sculptured 

 city of ancient Grecian art, and filled with the patriotism that 

 fought at Marathon, should, with the greatest fervor of devotion, 

 throng the precincts of her temple, and with primal rites of 

 sacrifice and stately pomp of solemn ceremonies, honor her, who 

 was the mother of their pride and joy ! 



This lofty plane of life the race has never left. And here, 

 to-day, in the new world of the West, in the nineteenth century 

 of our Lord, beneath a roof dedicated to Christian worship, and 

 mindful of our common country, we render hearty thanks to 

 the only living and true God, for the grand old art upon which 

 the towering fabric of our social being enduringly rests. 

 ' But agriculture is not the only art of civilized society. Per- 

 haps, indeed, at this stage of human advancement, it is not to 

 be considered as the art that gives to our most modern life its 

 distinguishing characteristics. There are arts upon which even 

 agriculture greatly relics — the arts of mechanical and manufac- 



