AGRICULTURE ON CLIMATE. 189 



observable. Why should there be? Thanks to the intro- 

 duction of coal as fuel, there has been, in the southern half 

 of New England, no reduction of woodlands. In my neigh- 

 borhood, where one acre has been redeemed from forest ten 

 acres of open field or pasture have gone back to wood. To 

 this we may add the increase of orcharding and the shade 

 trees which so beautifully adorn our cities, towns and villages. 

 Our swamps and bogs, our rocks, steep hillsides and sandy 

 pine lands, which render so large a part of our area unfit for 

 tillage, may also have had a saving influence on our climate. 

 It is not New England alone, however, that is to be consid- 

 ered, but the whole country, especially the vast valley of 

 the Mississippi, where nearly the whole surface is capable of 

 cultivation, and where the causes alluded to are most likely 

 to culminate in disaster. Nor is it for our present popula- 

 tion or for a few years, but for the hundreds of millions of 

 people that should be our heirs at our first millenial. 



But it is not well to look with sad forebodings into the 

 future, unless it incite us to efforts to prevent threatened dis- 

 aster. May we not hope that science and art will lend their 

 influence toward better systems of agriculture ? In the soil- 

 ing system, so called, of feeding cattle, and in the ensilage 

 system of preserving green food, which seems to be meeting 

 with very general success, we see the dawning of a better 

 day, as these systems for a given amount of dairy produce 

 require a high cultivation of smaller areas, leaving the pas- 

 tures to be remanded back to forests. 



When our bleak hill pastures and mossy plains shall be a 

 thing of the past, and their places supplied by a growth of 

 cooling, rain-inducing trees, then, without any deleterious 

 efi'ects, our swamps and bogs may be drained and we shall 

 find in them our most productive soil. An enlightened civi- 

 lization may hereafter demand, by legal enactment, that no 

 man shall own more land than he can properly cultivate and 

 keep in luxuriant condition, and demand also the utmost 

 economy in the saving of fertilizers. 



Indeed, the aids to agriculture which science has already 

 furnished may sink into insignificance compared with what 

 she is yet to achieve in its behalf. She may yet come to the 

 rescue and furnish the means of preventing the waste which 



