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work upon a limited area, upon a small surface. It advances 

 by the application of thought and mind, and not by hard work 

 alone. It contrives new methods and applies greater attention 

 and completeness of treatment than the system which diffuses 

 the work over a large area or a great variety of miscellaneous 

 crops. 



Take the matter of drainage, for instance, the most essential 

 improvement of modern agriculture. If you have a farm of 

 two or three hundred acres, how much of it could you expect 

 to do with only two or three hands ? A large part of it must 

 remain a cold, wet soil, perhaps, to yield what it will, while 

 you are left to a few fields and compelled to abandon the 

 remainder. But if you can get a larger profit from these few 

 fields than from the whole farm under its former management, 

 isn't it better to concentrate the work upon them ? 



Just look at the profits of this system of concentrated labor, 

 as compared with that which diffuses the work over a large 

 area ! If you find, as you do in individual cases, that the 

 yield of an acre has been a thousand dollars, you can readily 

 understand that the rate of profit on the capital invested and 

 the labor may amount to a hundred per cent., or even greater 

 than that, but if you find that these returns come from a hun- 

 dred acres, or even forty, you know in an instant, that the rate 

 of profit can scarcely exceed six, or at most, ten per cent. 



Tiiere is many a hard-working farmer, who is up early and 

 down late, who seems to be trying to do his best, and yet he 

 doesn't seem to get ahead in the world. The neighbors would 

 suppose he ought to be forehanded. They say it's too bad that 

 a man who is willing to work so shouldn't make more headway. 

 The trouble is, he has adopted a wrong method and is more 

 ambitious of a large than of a good farm, and so he will always 

 be rowing up stream. 



But leaving this subject, which I have pursued at greater 

 length than I had intended, because I am satisfied from exten- 

 sive observation, that it is the point on which so many farmers 

 make their fatal mistake, and so fail to derive that satisfaction 

 which always attends success, let me pass for a moment to the 

 consideration of one or two others. 



And another prominent and serious defect in our New 

 England farming, and one which it seems very difficult if not 



