MR. KING S ADDRESS. 



travels a smooth, direct and pleasant road which brings h?ni 

 with more expedition and safety to his journey's end : there are 

 few farmers who will be content to toil and drudge from year to 

 year in the same dull round which their fathers followed for a 

 bare subsistence, while they see their more enterprising neigh- 

 bors in the full tide of successful experiment, becoming richer 

 and more prosperous from having adopted the improved meth- 

 ods o( husbandry. Does any larmer seriously complain that he 

 has derived no benefit from Agricultural Societies, that he has 

 not been instructed by their publications, that he has not been 

 enlightened by the knowledge they have diffused ? If that 

 farmer has not connected himself with the Society, has not read 

 its publications nor followed its recommendations, it would be no 

 less unreasonable for him to complain that his corn would not 

 vegetate before he had committed it to the earth and while it 

 remained in his granary — it would be no less unreasonable than 

 the complaint of the hypochondriac that he is not warmed by 

 the sun, while he secludes himself in his chamber and bars his 

 doors and his windows. Many farmers have suffered their 

 minds to be prejudiced by an unfounded and unreasonable dis- 

 trust of Agricultural Societies, as encouraging and sanctioning 

 book farming. It may not be unprofitable to inquire how books 

 on husbandry are compiled. A practical farmer in Andover, 

 for instance, has raised large crops of potatoes, another in Ha- 

 verhill has had great succes in the cultivation of rye, another in 

 Newbury has raised superior wheat for successive years, and 

 many other farmers in various parts of the county, have been 

 successful in the cultivation of the several crops to which they 

 have given particular attention ; actuated by the scriptural in- 

 junction to " do good and communicate/' they write detailed 

 accounts of their several methods of cultivation and send them 

 to a common friend, a farmer well read and experienced ; he 

 carefully examines the communications, received from sources 

 which he knows are entitled to confidence, he arranges them, 

 winnows out the grain, and garners it up in a book. And now is 

 there any thing like legerdemain or cunning in this ? Is there 

 any thing suspicious about it ? Had you visited any one of the 



