HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY. 307 



HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Farms. 



There is no art which can be compared in importance with 

 that of agriculture, for to it belongs the production of food for 

 man and animals ; on it depends the welfare and development 

 of the whole human species, and the riches of states. There 

 is no other art in which the application of correct principles 

 would be more productiv^e of beneficial results, or of greater 

 and more decided importance. Hence it appears quite unac- 

 countable that we vainly search for leading practical principles 

 in the writings of agriculturists. The methods employed in 

 the cultivation of land are different in the same districts. In 

 the same neighborhood, farms lying side by side, separated only 

 by titles of division — the soil of the same composition, with a 

 location equally favorable — are cultivated essentially different 

 from each other. When we inquire the causes of these differ- 

 ences, the answer is, mainly, that they depend on circum- 

 stances. No answer could show us more plainly the need of 

 agricultural knowledge, to ascertain what these circumstances 

 are. Each cultivator of the soil is attached to his own chosen 

 way, and plodding on in his long beaten path, turns neither to 

 the right hand nor to the left, to inquire of his neighbor in 

 what his^uccess depends. Whether he has made a judicious 

 disposition of his fertilizers, or what to give to each plant, that 

 the object in view may be attained ; whether he has deepened 

 and properly pulverized his soil, so as to give full play to all 

 the rootlets of his plants, that they may descend in any and 

 all directions in search of food sufficient for their full and per- 

 fect development. Now it seems to us that it must be self- 

 evident to every farmer that heat, light, moisture, and the 

 component parts of the atmosphere, are indispensable to the 



