42 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ach, and require certain kinds of food. If you treat a crop 

 with special manures, you can soon find by experiment just 

 what that crop likes, and precisely what ought to be dv»ne for 

 it to get the best results. You all understand, after a while, 

 the importance of reducing the bulk of manures as much as 

 possible. Let me refer again to Delaware. The soil of that 

 State is made up of the washings of a great river. A large 

 portion of the land has been cropped and cropped, until some 

 of it will now hardly bear sorrel, it is so poor. A man went 

 down there some years ago and bought some of this land that 

 would not pay taxes. He cultivated it with only superphos- 

 phate of lime, with a view to raising crops of j^eaches and 

 strawberries. It was like taking a drowned man out of the 

 sea. By means of the proper manuring, he soon restored 

 this land to a state of fertility and raised most excellent 

 crops. The rules of wealth and the laws of nature combine 

 to teach the lesson which may be applied right here amongst 

 you. All summer long, Boston has been complaining of the 

 bad odors from this river and that river. Worcester has 

 been complaining of her sewage ; so have Newport and other 

 places. AVe find that the Back Bay of Boston is the source 

 of a good deal of trouble — that the people living in the large 

 houses of that section say it is unhealthy. These matters 

 may seem al)out as far oif from agriculture as the North Pole, 

 yet they tell us some stern facts of nature. You make huge 

 draughts on the guano-bauks for material to put on the land, 

 and yet you waste in your rivers and sewers manure worth 

 more than guano. Not only this, but the effluvia from great 

 sewers poisons the air and undermines the health of the peo- 

 ple. And yet you allow the waste of matter, which, if fully 

 utilized, would make Norfolk County the garden of the world ; 

 you throw away, in fact, what would make this county and 

 every other county fruitful, and you die and pay for it. We 

 shut our eyes to all this, yet they will in time have to be 

 opened, and opened, perhaps, in the sternest way. In giv- 

 ing your premiums, also, you should look more to what will 

 develop the general agricultural interests of the county, rather 

 than simply the development of special crops. On this ques- 

 tion we must deal with things in the mass. 



There is another side to the question — its testhetic side. I 



