9 



of onrs ill its future that we invoke all the aid that science and skill 

 can render to increase the fertility of our soil and the variety and 

 richness of our j^roducts, that within our own borders may be found 

 all that the highest civilization demands, though the rest of the 

 world were sunk beneath the ocean or leagued together in arms 

 against us . And where shall we look for the field of investigation 

 and the line of discovery and invention that shall do for agiiculture 

 that which has been done by science and inventive skill to utilize 

 laJ>or in all the mechanical arts ? "We want something more than 

 mowers, and reapers, and shellers, — something more than improved 

 implements for putting in and gathering crops. Our fruits must be 

 the most dehcious, our grains the most prolific, our herds and flocks 

 mnst be the finest in form and quality. In the improvement of all 

 these Hes the farmer's greatest power for utilizing labor. He must 

 know how to secure the most productive soil and how to bring every 

 product to the highest standard of excellence. Just so far as he 

 does this does he render every blow he strikes more effective. But 

 to do all this he must enter a field of more difficult research than 

 the mechanical inventor can ever occupy, — a field requmng the 

 most accurately trained powers of observation and untiring pa- 

 tience. The mechanical inventor can repeat his experiments every 

 ,day or hour*, but the exj)eriments of the farmer often require not 

 only weeks and months, but years, for their completion. 



<^hemistiy, and the laws of vegetable and animal life, in all their 

 relations to the inorganic world, are the intricate subjects that claim 

 Lis study now, and will continue to do so while seed time and har- 

 vest remain. Every new discovery in either* of these fields may 

 increase the quantity and quality of his products, or render them 

 more certain. And thus, every year, manual labor on the farm will 

 be utilized so as to secure more abundant returns. Into these 

 fields, New England agricultural science has already been driven- 

 While those with richer lands have but to gather crops from soils 

 teeming with fertility, her farmers must master the veiy ai'cana of 

 science if they would compete with theu- more favored neighbors. 

 Every section of the country must, in the main, work out a system 

 of agriculture for itself ; but it will be in New England that much 

 of agricultural knowledge will be sought for, when the exhaustion 

 of soils and increase of population make agi'icultural science the 

 same necessity in the South and West that it now is to us. And 

 Xcw England, sneered at as the land of ice and gi-anite, as not 

 l>aviug laud enough between her hills for respectable farms, will b(> 



