U MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



up tlie good and tlic bad of our climate, we must bear in mind 

 that it is to the heat of our summers we owe the variety and 

 fine flavor of our fruits, in which we excel the English as 

 much as they excel us in scientific farming. From the heat of 

 our summers, too, comes our Indian corn, by far the most 

 important agricultural production of this country ; the value 

 of whicli slightly exceeds the aggregate of the three great 

 staples of wheat, cotton, and hay. 



The climate of New England, though often disrespectfully 

 spoken of, is not unfavorable to health and longevity in tiiose 

 who, in their way of living, observe the laws and conditions of 

 health. "We are apt to make the climate a sort of scape-goat 

 for sins which really lie at our own door. The general stand- 

 ard of health here is not so high as it might be, and ought to 

 be ; but this is not the climate's fault. Xor is it because we 

 work too hard. Men do not work any harder here tiian they 

 do in Great Britain, cither in the learned professions, or the 

 active employments of business. The truth is that men never 

 are killed by work, but they arc sometimes by worry. In New 

 England there arc many men and many women whose lives 

 are shortened, and whose vital force is diminished while they 

 do live, by moral causes ; by the corrosion of disappointed 

 aspirations, by the failure of unreasonable and fantastic hopes, 

 by the shrinking of ill-woven ambitions, by feverish longings 

 for those glittering prizes of life which very few can hope to 

 win, and by a rebellious chafing against the will of God, when 

 their lot is poverty, obscurity, and failure. And there is another 

 source of ill-health in New England, which stands at a point in 

 the circle of humanity directly opposite to that whicli I have 

 just been considering, and that is the prevalence of bad cook- 

 cry, and the amount of unwholesome food which is conse- 

 quently consumed. It is doubtless mortifying to the pride of 

 humanity to be obliged to confess that the grandest energies of 

 the will, and the finest operations of the understanding, are 

 dependant upon the way in which we treat that vulgar organ, 

 the stomach ; but the sooner we admit the truth, and act upon 

 it, the better it will be for us. I am persuaded that the food 

 served habitually upon a majority of the tables of New Eng- 

 land, is such as the rules of dietetics would pronounce to be 

 uniicalthy ; and that if the farmers of New England, should, 



