10 DR. SPOFFORD S ADDRESS. 



of industry. A hundred bushels of Indian corn, sixty bushels 

 of oats, forty bushels of rye, three tons of hay, three hundred 

 bushels of potatoes, have severally been raised on an acre of 

 our soil — and when its value, compared with prices in the west- 

 ern country, is taken into the account, it is believed that few 

 cultivators of the soil will find a richer reward. If man could 

 live by bread alone, it might peihaps be an object to transport 

 ourselves to the banks of the Ohio, where grain generally bears 

 from one-fourth to a third of the price it does here : but we are 

 now speaking of farmers, living in decent style, who have many 

 things to buy, and ought always to have something to sell, and 

 to suchj one bushel of grain raised here, will bring him in as 

 much of cash, or the necessaries of life, as four raised in the 

 western country. 



When in former years I used to partake of the labor of 

 " hay-time," and brooded over the hardship of spending all 

 summer in providing food to sustain the cattle over winter, I 

 thought the farmers of the south were blessed indeed, where the 

 cattle could find their own food on green pastures all the year, 

 and fatten at large beneath a milder sky. But upon better 

 information I found, that instead of raising fine cattle without 

 labor, they could scarce raise them at all ; that their beef was 

 poor, and a Georgia cow scarcely yielded more milk than a 

 New England goat ; and that instead of green pastures all the 

 year, grass hardly grows, and they scarcely know what a green 

 pasture is. 



A medical friend,* who spent a summer in Georgia, observed 

 that all appearance of green grass in fields or pastures, is entirely 

 parched and dry by August ; that the kw cattle live on straw, 

 and the tops of corn, and by picking a little grass along the 

 banks of streams and in shady places. So that our southern 

 States, aside from the artificial curse of slavery, can hardly claim 

 advantages over New England. 



We enjoy advantages somewhat peculiar in having fertile lands 

 along the seacoast, so that we have a ready market and our 

 green hills greet the eye of the mariner as he sails along our 



♦ Dr. Warren Abbot, deceased. 



