46 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of Xcw England society, and by which none ])rofit more than 

 our farmers. How greatly the agriculture of Mapsachnsetts 

 has been stimulated and improved by the commercial cities 

 along our coast, and by the manufacturing towns which, within 

 a few years, have grown up on the banks of our innavigable 

 streams — innavigable because of those breaks and falls which 

 make them available for manufacturing purposes! Towns like 

 Lowell and Lawrence enhance the value of every farm in their 

 neighborhood, and stimulate the industry of every farmer. 

 And they do this in two ways : first, they furnish to the farmer 

 a new market for the })roduce of his farm, and tlius diminisli 

 the cost of transportation, which is the farmer's great difficulty 

 everywhere. It is a difficulty inherent in his occupation, 

 because the products of the farm are always and everywhere 

 bulky. Here is a man with five dollars in his pocket, who 

 wants a barrel of flour, and there is a man with a barrel of 

 flour, who wants five dollars ; but the two are five hundred 

 miles apart. In vain do they stretch their hands across the 

 waste and exclaim : " Ye gods, annihilate time and space, and 

 make two lovers happy." A city like Lowell, suddenly and 

 rapidly starting up in the midst of an agricultural region, docs 

 annihilate time and space, to all practical purposes. And in 

 the second place, these aggregations of population furnish, or 

 may furnish, to the contiguous farms, their appropriate nutri- 

 ment in the shape of manure. Manure is the food of the farm; 

 and if the resources of our cities and large towns in this regard 

 be not fully employed, it is because farming has not reached 

 the degree of excellence which it might. And there is still 

 another advantage secured to the farmer by the proximity of 

 these large towns. They create a demand for fruit and garden 

 vegetables, and thus enable the farmer to vary his productions, 

 and diversify the somewhat monotonous toils of agriculture 

 with the lighter labors of horticulture. 



We see also in the land of our fathers, from which our agri- 

 culture, as well as our laws and our speech were derived, an 

 illustration of the benefits which agriculture has enjoyed from 

 the diversity of employments open to its people. The excellence 

 which British agriculture has reached is due in a considerable 

 degree to the dense population of the British isles, and the 

 number of local markets which have been thus created ; and 



