598 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



to its progress and perfection, and raising to power and opu- 

 lence the people who most assiduously pursued it, yet it has 

 not made that advance which might have been expected, even 

 in those countries usually quoted as evidences of the most 

 successful cultivation. 



It has been customary to speak of China, as the most extra- 

 ordinary instance of elaborate and economical culture ; and it 

 is so, to a certain extent. Nothing can surpass the indefatiga- 

 ble perseverance and industry of the Chinese husbandman. 

 He omits nothing and he wastes nothing. He collects every- 

 thing that can increase the productiveness of the soil, and ap- 

 plies it with the utmost care and attention. His crops are the 

 only things seen on his land ; a useless plant is a horror to him, 

 and the growth of dock and pigweed, often mingled with our 

 corn and potatoes, would put him into convulsions. His farm 

 and his garden are one and the same thing. He considers agri- 

 culture and horticulture synonymous terms, it being as difficult 

 for him as for us, to define where the one ends and the other 

 begins. He tills his land as his father tilled it before him ; he 

 knows that certain applications produce certain results, and that 

 is all he does know. He takes no farmer's periodical, to bother 

 him with novel notions; has no new implement forced upon 

 his notice ; is ignorant of any other stock than the unwieldy 

 animal that wallows before his wooden plough ; belongs to no 

 agricultural society ; has never heard of a cattle-show ; and 

 his patience is not subjected to the ordeal of hearing an annual 

 address. 



Centuries ago, the same looking man could have been found, 

 working on the same field, with the same clumsy utensils ; 

 and, in all probability, he will be found there ages hence, with 

 unaltered garb, without change of accompaniment, and with 

 precisely the same amount of skill and information. 



There are sometimes impediments to making acquaintance 

 with the minutias of Chinese husbandry. The foreign investi- 

 gator is liable to interruptions, which entitle the inhabitants to 

 more credit for conservatism than courtesy, they occasionally 

 evincing a disposition to supply him with more specimens of 

 the mineralogy of the country than he has leisure or inclina- 



