234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



potent agent of civilization, are of most recent origin, and 

 are children of the brain's later birth. 



The mariner's compass had been invented, but the quad- 

 rant had not, and chronometers were unknown, while the 

 thermometer, barometer, and even the telescope had hardly 

 revealed their uses. Ship-building was comparatively a 

 rude art, and the geography of the sea entirely unwritten. 



Those great agencies of mechanical industry which have 

 augmented a thousand-fold the productive power of man, 

 and proportionally increased his comfort, as the use of fossil 

 coal and the blast furnace in the smelting of iron, of gunpow- 

 der and steam in mining, of the flying shuttle, spinning-frame, 

 power-loom, and carding machines, and improvements in 

 bleaching, dyeing and stamping in the textile manufactures,^ 

 and the wonderful discoveries in chemistry, analytical and 

 agricultural, and the wondrous helps to farming, all belong to 

 a subsequent period. Cotton, which now employs millions of 

 people and millions of capital in its growth and manufacture, 

 and furnishes the clothing for many more millions, was not 

 long before regarded as a curious exotic. The fire-engine, 

 safety-lamp, life-boat and life preservers, gas-light, the tour- 

 niquet and chloroform, and many other appliances for the 

 conservation of life and property, were unknown in that era. 



In short, whatever proficiency may have been attained in 

 the arts of civilization in the early ages, we may say truly 

 that their present development from a state of almost bar- 

 baric rudeness has been contemporaneous with the history of 

 America, of which our manufactures form a large part, 

 where, too, especially in later years, our agricultural machin- 

 ery and implements occupy no mean position. 



The first settlers in America brought with them to these 

 shores a knowledge of most of the arts and manufactures of 

 the parent country, as will be evidenced by a list of those 

 sent over to Virginia and the Southern colonies, established 

 under royal patronage, as well as those voluntarily settling 

 in the more Northern colonies. Husbandmen, brewers, 

 bakers, sawyers, carpenters, shipwrights, millwrights, 

 ploughwrights, masons, turners, smiths of all kinds, coopers, 

 weavers, tanners, potters, shoemakers, rope-makers, edge- 

 tool makers, brick-makers, dressers of flax and hemp and 



