168 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



infer that the labors of the chemist are unimportant in agricul- 

 ture. How, except by his sagacity and patience, have the im- 

 portant results been obtained which are now doing so much to 

 advance the interests of agriculture? And still there is a great 

 work to do in the analysis of plants, in all stages of their 

 growth ; of manures ; of the air, and the waters. And that 

 will be a day of bright promise to the farming interests of Mas- 

 sachusetts, (or, indeed, of any other state of the Union,) when 

 she shall appoint a State chemist, not for one or two years, but 

 during good behavior. In conjunction with, and by the aid of, 

 Agricultural and Horticultural Societies, such a man would do 

 more to increase the productions of our soil, and thus promote 

 the public welfare, than the same amount of expenditure could 

 accomplish in any other way. But the grand difficulty in the 

 way of such an appointment is, that the public cannot see any 

 immediate fruits from it. 



Another important consequence from these principles is, that 

 there is scarcely any soil too barren to be made very fertile ; 

 and that what the farmers of New England should aim at, is, 

 not to transplant their sons to the fertile prairies of the west, 

 but to improve our own soil ; so that they shall be contented 

 with the paternal inheritance. To illustrate this position, let 

 me give an example from my own experience. Every one 

 knows that there is not a more barren spot in New England, 

 than the further extremity of Cape Cod ; where the traveller 

 sees little else but white drifting sand, and scarcely no vegeta- 

 tion, except a few stinted pines, and beach, and poverty grass. 

 Finding myself in Truro, and, as I fancied, almost beyond the 

 regions of agriculture, I was surprised, on being invited by a 

 respectable farmer there to visit a piece of ground, on which he 

 was in the habit of raising annually fifty bushels of Indian corn 

 to the acre. I found that the soil did not differ from the white 

 sand around it, except in containing an abundance of fragments 

 of quahaug shells, and enough of organic matter to give it a 

 dark color Having extracted these shells, that is, all the car- 

 bonate of lime, (about 20 per cent.,) and a little phosphate, and 

 then burnt off the organic matter, nothing remained but the 

 pure white sand of the Cape. 



