8 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



aids furnished to successful culture by improved instruments 

 of labor and by modern scientific research. Although as to the 

 former, there has, of late years, been a great and growing 

 change, and men who but recently looked with distrust and 

 aversion upon what they called new-fangled inventions, will 

 now cheerfully use, and, if they cannot afford to ])uy, will hire 

 one and another of those valuable labor-saving implements, 

 which are doing so much to facilitate the operations of the 

 farm, yet there is still room for progress. In this matter the 

 young farmer should begin with the right ideas. "While he 

 listens to the advice of his elders, and pays due respect to their 

 example as well as precept, he should guard against becoming 

 the slave of old prejudices, and should observe, and judge, and 

 act for himself. To say that because his father before him 

 managed to cut and cure and get in his hay with a scythe and 

 fork and hand-rake, therefore there is no need of his using a 

 mowing-machine, a tedder, or a horse-rake, is just as absurd as 

 it would be for him never to ride in a rail-car, wear a cloth 

 coat, or eat flour bread, because his grandfather jogged along 

 on horseback, was comfortable in linsey-woolsey, and didn't 

 starve on rye and Indian. Of course he must exercise prudence 

 and caution, and neither go beyond his means nor lightly adopt 

 every new contrivance simply because it is new. But on the 

 other hand, let him studiously avoid that spirit of distrust 

 which looks with suspicion upon every departure from old 

 usage. Let him, with eyes wide open to see, and mind open 

 to conviction, carefully observe and narrowly watch, and then 

 adopt whatever full experiment by individuals or associations 

 has proved to be advantageous and profitable. 



I spoke of scientific research. I liavc no disposition at this 

 last stage to exhaust your kind patience with a disquisition on 

 scientific farming. But let me say, that we lookers-on cannot 

 understand this prejudice which exists among farmers against 

 the a}>plication of science to agriculture. Why, what is agri- 

 culture but a science, both a science and an art, whose birth 

 ■was coeval with the birth of man, whose growth has been meas- 

 ured l)y the progress of civilization, and whose perfection will 

 not be attained till the race shall have reached its millennial 

 state. Every manufactory has its chemist ; every art and trade 

 modifies and adapts its operations to come within the sphere of 



