sold for only seven shillings. Agricultural machinery was of not much account 

 as compared with flesh meat ; a new plough costing ten pence, and a dung cart 

 with all materials one shilling and two pence. Thirty bushels of wheat at its 

 lowest price would buy an ox, but wheat sometimes became four times as dear. 

 In unspiritualized and warlike times men were more distinctly carnivorous. 



But as men have grown into peaceful arts, and as countries have become 

 inclosed, agriculture has become important, and men have become milk- 

 eating and graminivorous. When tribes depend on the chase or are engaged 

 in war, they can carry but little corn and have no use for the Stockbridge fer- 

 tilizers. The Tartars are said to cook their beefsteaks under their saddle to-day. 

 No discovery of modern times perhaps more deserves the grateful reception 

 of mankind than that which chemistry has made in relation to crop and dairy 

 husbandry. A few years ago the idea would have seemed like a dream, that a 

 cow on a dry old pasture could be much better kept up to her milk by giving 

 her a little cotton seed or other albuminous food in addition to her arid morsel ; 

 or that without enormous expense in carting manures, a hill top, if not too dry, 

 could be made to produce a certain predicted addition to its usual crop, by fol- 

 lowing the formula of a college. Such practical use of a student's brain re- 

 minds one of the old Grecian story of Thales, who, being ridiculed for his use- 

 less labors, proved their value by buying up all the expected oli-»e crop, and 

 becoming enormously opulent through his scientific prescience that unfavorable 

 weather would create a scarcity of olives. Akin to this is the humanit}'- or the 

 skill that has increased our milk crop from less than three millions of gallons in 

 1845 to thirty five millions now. If science and agricultural colleges had done 

 nothing more than to detect the deficiency of certain elements in the soil and to 

 demonstrate the folly of wasting labor, and inapplicable manures in the effort 

 to crop specially exhausted land, the state and nation would owe a vast debt to 

 knowledge. The day of the penny wise farmer who ignorantly skins or starves 

 his land ought to be over. His wild mistake is like that of a decrepit archbish- 

 op, who was dining with a large party at the house of a Duke, and sitting at 

 the right hand of the Duchess. Suddenly the arclibishop cried out in anguish, 

 " Oh ! Gracious Heavens, have mercy upon me ! It has come at last !" "What 

 has come ? What is it ?" cried all the guests in a breath. "Oh ! palsy, palsy ! 

 I've been fearing it these twenty years; there's no feeling in my leg; I've been 

 pinching it these five minutes and it's as dead as wood ! Oh God have mercy 

 on my soul !" "Pray let your grace calm yourself," said the Duchess, "it's I 

 — it's me you've been pinching." The farmer who starves his land, may profit 

 by this story. He doesn't know ivhat he has been pinching. In the effort to 

 nip extravagance and waste, he has been pinchmg the Goddess of plenty, — be- 

 neficent nature, — all the hope that stands between himself and the poor-house. 

 He has been pinching his wife and children. No man has the right to farm 

 badly. Each farm is one of the many on which the census is based. The sta- 

 tus of one's county, of his state, of his section, aye, of the United States among 

 the nations ot the world, is imperiled. His folly lowers the average of nation- 

 al agricultural excellence. A single acre, a single hushel may make the differ- 

 ence in the agricultural rank held by the states or the nation. That each state 



