DISCUSSION OF SPECIALTIES. 105 



necessary for success in agriculture. It seems to me that 

 there is very little to discuss in that paper. Some essays 

 that have been read here and at other meetings have opened 

 such wide gaps for discussion that debate upon them might 

 last a long while, but I see nothing in this paper that is open 

 to criticism or that calls for anything except for approval. 

 I admire it very much indeed. 



The Chairman. I will call upon Colonel Wilson. 



Col. Henry W. Wilson. All I can do, Mr. Chairman, 

 is to show myself. I heard responses made about me that 

 there was no disagreement in regard to that paper, and that 

 is the word that we can all say. 



I have noticed a sort of general idea among fanners that 

 if they have made a specialty of any department in agricul- 

 ture or husbandry, they have somehow ceased to be farmers. 

 Now, if you go into a shoe-shop, for instance, where there 

 is a subdivision of labor, you do not find shoemakers, — you 

 find heelers, trimmers, lasters, and so on. So if you go 

 into a machine-shop, you see a man who works at the drill, 

 the planer or some other machine. He is not a machinist. 

 That may be true enough with respect to such men, but that 

 rule will not apply to husbandry at all. There are certain 

 great principles that must be observed, and which are as 

 applicable in one department of husbandry as another. It 

 is the same in breeding. The same general principles of 

 breeding must be observed whether a man breeds sheep, or 

 horses or neat cattle. And so, when we come to talk of 

 general market-gardening, the very writer of that paper, 

 which I want to speak of as one of the most beautiful papers 

 that I ever heard read at a meeting of this Board, was told 

 two years ago, in a laughing way, by a member of the 

 Board, " You are not a farmer, you are a strawberry grower." 

 Well, I do not know how much he may have branched out 

 into other departments of husbandry, but the fact that he is 

 a strawberry grower shows that he understands the successful 

 application of the true principles of husbandry to his sti'aw- 

 berries as another man does to the crop adapted to his soil, 

 climate and location. The man who has not moved about 

 in a great many sections of the country can form but a faint 

 idea of the extent to which this special husbandry is being 



