100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



On former occasions I have alluded to the astoundhig results 

 which have l)ecn developed by the progress of science and 

 civilization during the present century. In no previous age 

 have the energies of the world been so concentrated in efforts 

 to economize time, increase power, multiply the comforts 

 and elevate the condition of mankind. The adventurous 

 spirit of modern times has brought forth discoveries and in- 

 ventions equally remarkable in all the departments of life. 

 No project is too great, no enterprise too grand for the spirit 

 of the age. How remarkaljle the scale of development ! 

 How wonderful the genius of man ! How sublime the con- 

 quest of mind ! 



Before entering more fully into the subject of which I am 

 to speak this evening, let us for a moment contemplate some 

 of the events which have transpired in our own age. Many 

 are now living who can remember the time when not a loom 

 was propelled by water, not an engine driven by steam, not 

 an iron rail or a telegraph wire, not a reaper or mower, 

 in all our broad land. Some here remember the time when 

 there was not a steam-engine in all New England, not a pound 

 of anthracite coal used for fire or furnace, not a steamboat 

 traversing the waters of this continent. It is only about 

 eighty-five years since John Fitch, of Philadelphia, first ap- 

 plied steam to his boat, the "Perseverance," on the Delaware 

 River, — the first attempt in America to use steam for naviga- 

 tion, predicting with the foresight of a prophet, as he did in 

 his letter to Benjamin Franklin, that the power of this agent 

 would ultimately navigate the rivers, lakes and oceans of the 

 world. 



How marvellous the power developed by steam ! Man 

 places a ton of coal in an improved Corliss engine, and it 

 produces for industry the labor which requires three hundred 

 and sixty-five days of a strong man ; and it is stated on author- 

 ity, that the power developed by coal imported into Massachu- 

 setts accomplishes more for industry than could be done if all 

 the forty millions of men, women and children of the United 

 States should devote themselves to manual labor, and that the 

 machinery moved by coal in Great Britain, equals the man-power 

 of all the inhal)itants of the globe. Suppress the use of steam, 

 this modern motive-poM^er which moves the machinery of the 



