FARMS. 119 



resources are precisely alike, and to which one system of man- 

 agement can be applied. Size, soil, condition, location, all com- 

 bine to prevent this ; and one of the most important and funda- 

 mental principles of farming is that which teaches us how to 

 avail ourselves of those resources which are contained, in every 

 variety of combination, in the thirty-five thousand farms into 

 which our Commonwealth is divided. The true value of this 

 will be fully understood, when we remember that one farmer 

 fails because he nev^er ascertains the true intention of his farm, 

 never learns how to make the most of it as a whole, and another 

 succeeds on the same tract of land, because he comprehends 

 how it can best be managed in all its parts so as to make a 

 symmetrical and profitable system. 



We have been invited during the last year to visit three farms 

 in the county, not for the purpose of awarding a premium, but 

 for the sake of instruction and gratification. Each farm is 

 truly remarkable in its way, and we consider it quite a misfor- 

 ' tune that circumstances well understood by every property 

 holder in this country, have prevented our obtaining an accu- 

 rate and systematic account of the receipts and expenditures, 

 the profit and loss, the cost of this crop and that, in a word, 

 the true economy of each. The merchant can tell you the 

 earnings of his ship, the manufacturer may proclaim with 

 impunity the profits of his mill, but the farmer, upon whose 

 property the eye of the whole community is fixed, is tormented 

 by a system of espionage which makes him the prey of asses- 

 sors, and throws the great burden of taxation on his shoulders, 

 because his estate is real, and because he is less likely than 

 almost any other member of society to be compelled to avail 

 himself of those institutions which have received the peculiar 

 prefix of civil. But to our farms. 



The first farm to which the committee were invited, was the 

 estate of William Sutton, of South Danvers. It contains about 

 four hundred acres, extending nearly one mile from his resi- 

 dence towards Lynn, and has mostly been reclaimed from a 

 rough pasture condition within the last twenty-five years. The 

 cultivated land lies in the level intervals and upon the hill-sides 

 between rough ledges of rocks, and has been judiciously cleared 

 chiefly for the purposes of hay and root crops, the former of 

 which is usually very abundant. The orchards are in a neat 



