PROGRESS IN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. 41 



made an impression throughout the country, way clown in 

 Delaware and Pennsylvania. We in New England actually 

 live on the mother soil of the world. When we go out to 

 the farms in the West, we are apt to think that that is the 

 only place for the farmer ; but the fact is, fully as much can 

 be done in New England by mechanical and scientific proc- 

 esses, and by using all the means which are placed in the 

 hands of the former here. These old pudding-stone rocks of 

 New England, for instance, give you all the lime and the ma- 

 nurial requirements wanted, and with the common air you 

 can get all the culture you need. I had occasion to go down 

 to Delaware a few months ago, — a State where men get $5,000 

 for an acre of strawberries. I saw one corn-field upon which 

 the man told me ho had raised eighty bushels to the acre ; 

 but I told him that in New England they sometimes raised 

 one hundred bushels to the acre, not including the pumpkins, 

 squashes, etc., which were raised with it. I mentioned that 

 one hundred and seventeen bushels of corn had been raised 

 to the acre in the town of Pembroke, Mass. This story was 

 very hard for the man to believe. 



But it is not these exceptional crops, let me say, that are 

 best calculated to improve our agriculture ; and this leads me 

 to the subject upon which I want especially to speak to you, 

 viz. : — " What really should be the objects and the motives of 

 the agriculturists of this country?" We are all talking 

 about the science of ascriculture. What we want to know is 

 whether it can be reduced to practical results. These various 

 experiments, made by men to get extraordinary crops, do but 

 little to advance the real science of agriculture. True sci- 

 ence gets all the facts, lumps them together, and deducts 

 conclusions from the whole, and not from isolated parts. The 

 agricultural colleges do a vast deal of good, and will do more 

 when the people come to understand what the real value of 

 an agricultural college is. They teach that it is better to offer 

 a premium for crops which can be easily raised, than for 

 those extraordinary crops which can only be raised with diffi- 

 culty. It is well for the farmer to understand the limitations 

 of his work, and to know what he can do and what he cannot 

 do, — what ought to be done and what ought not. Crops are 

 like human beings, to a certain extent. They have a stom- 

 6» 



