66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



every manufacturing establishment along our streams, flow out 

 constantly, into the rivers and on to the ocean, the strength and 

 productiveness of our land. Is this waste never to cease, and is 

 not this material yet to be poured back upon the land from 

 which it was taken ? If it is not, then when we look out upon 

 the water, it is not richly freighted ships that we are to think 

 of as buried beneath its waves, but it is the strength and riches 

 of the land, which commerce brings to the thousand tributaries 

 of the ocean, and the thoughtlessness or wastefulness of man 

 pours into them. 



There is in agriculture another source of mental cultivation, 

 referred to in the beginning of this address, to which I again 

 invite yV)ur special attention. It is the cultivation of the 

 beautiful. Nothing is plainer than that beauty was as distinctly 

 provided for in creation as utility, if it is not indeed itself one 

 of the highest utilities. And nothing is more common than for 

 mere beauty to be despised by a certain class of farmers, who 

 pride themselves on their plain common sense. Their value of 

 a fine tree is the number of feet of wood it will produce. They 

 build houses like sugar boxes, with a hole in the middle. They 

 select, perhaps, the very poorest place upon their whole farm 

 for its location — the barn and out-houses shut off the best' 

 views — old carts, broken sleds, half chopped logs, lumber the 

 yard, while posts, broken boards and piles of stones and rubbish 

 adorn their road fences. All this they endure for a lifetime, 

 and think there is no help for it, when the same money would 

 give them tasteful dwellings, and two days' work a year would 

 clear their grounds of every kind of rubbish. We can hardly 

 expect such a man to stop to admire the beautiful flowers with 

 which nature enamels the earth, and every rod given up to roses 

 and tulips he considers so much taken from honest potatoes and 

 corn ! Now it is in vain for me to read such a man a lesson. 

 We must turn him over to nature, and he will soon find either 

 that he or she has made a great mistake. She spreads beauty 

 everywhere, as though it was a prime element to be made 

 prominent in all her works. Let him trace the wavy outline of 

 all the leaves — their varied but beautiful patterns — and then 

 mark their tints, as from emerald green, they flash into the 

 blaze of autumn glory, the perfect pattern and balanced colors 

 of the flowers. Let him admire the pictured lichens, with 



