644 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



well as physical labor. The man who is content to blunder 

 on in ignorance and make no improvement, may stay on land 

 and cumber the ground, but is not worthy to be called a farmer. 

 Thought, calculation, the following of causes to their effects, 

 and the tracing of effects back to their causes, are essential to 

 the farmer. Some knowledge of the different kinds of soil, 

 and their aptitude to different kinds of crops, and the peculiar 

 cultivation which ^each crop demands, the farmer must have. 



However content our farmers might heretofore have been, 

 while rich virgin soil was readily to be found, and intercourse 

 was infrequent, to be ignorant of their own business, and to 

 mark time where their fathers left them, none but the most 

 stupid can remain so now ; for our cultivated lands give un- 

 mistakable evidence that they demand of the farmer, in return 

 for their harvests, something which they have not heretofore 

 received ; and public attention is so strongly drawn to the in- 

 terests of agriculture, and the best practical and scientific 

 minds are brought so strongly to bear upon them, that through- 

 out the whole of New England and the country there is an 

 agitation of the subject that reaches and affects every farm- 

 house, and excites thought, and diffuses and elicits knowledge, 

 even in the midst of the most fertile and seemingly inexhausti- 

 ble plains of the West. 



And to the aid of our farmers, in their progress, come the 

 numerous able and instructive agricultural papers and other 

 periodicals, as well as more elaborate works, no one of which 

 can be read from week to week without profit, — showing the 

 farmer, as they do, what other theoretical and practical farmers 

 think, what difficulties they encounter, how they overcome 

 them, giving him the benefit of their experience, exciting him 

 to make a subject of thought of what he himself has done or 

 omitted to do, and what the situation and capabilities of his 

 own farm require him to do ; arousing hiip to action, and in- 

 viting him to treasure up, for the benefit of himself and his 

 children, the fruits of his experience. 



With these demands upon him, from the very nature of his 

 profession ; with these facilities for acquiring knowledge re- 

 lating to it, and other matters, and with that glory of New 

 England, always cherished by the farmer, the common school, 

 together with the long winter evenings, and the leisure hours 



