646 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



for agricultural products which stimulates and encourages the 

 agriculturist to constant progress and improvement. Farming, 

 intelligently and judiciously conducted, must thus hold out 

 inducements to those with whom profit is a principal object ; 

 profit not so great or so rapid as is promised by manufactures, 

 commerce, and some other pursuits, but more free from killing 

 anxieties, and terrible vicissitudes ; profit slow, sure, and more 

 to be coveted by well regulated minds. 



Farmers and farmers' sons, what think you of agriculture ? 

 Ought you not to think it among the most important and most 

 honorable pursuits, and worthy of the best intellects and best 

 efforts of the best men ? 



Sung the Roman bard, nearly two thousand years ago, — 



•' fortunatos nimium, si sua bona norint, 

 Agricolas !" 



thrice happy farmers if they knew their own blessings; and 



1 repeat the strain, thrice happy farmers if they knew their own 

 blessings. 



Farmers of Plymouth County, live worthy of your vocation. 

 Train up your sons in the way they should go, with that thor- 

 ough physical, intellectual and moral development, for which 

 you have such advantages : not that it is to be expected, or 

 desired, that they should all become farmers ; because a con- 

 stant sort of subsoiling is going on in society, and under our 

 free institutions, that what has been and is, will be; and many 

 of the places of honor, and influence, and responsibility in all 

 walks of life, public and private, will continue to be filled from 

 your ranks, by those who come forth to the view of the world 

 with that great prerequisite to success, a sound mind in a 

 sound body. 



Let your sons be so trained, that a race worthy of their an- 

 cestry may ever be ready to answer to the call of duty, whether 

 it be to fill the place of an accomplished farmer at home, or in 

 not a more honorable, but more public sphere of action. 



Certain facts concerning agriculture are well ascertained. 

 Nature, in the course of ages, has, by various deposits, by the 

 decomposition of vegetable matter and the blending of various 

 elements, furnished much of the earth's surface with a genial 

 and productive soil. That is a wise and beneficent provision, 

 fitted to the necessities of man, the pioneer, struggling with 



