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respect or admiration. Their conflict was comparatively light, 

 and their victory comparatively easy. 



Now, however, new difficulties beset our path — difficulties 

 which must be met by systematic and methodized farming in 

 order that they may be overcome. The soil of the older States, 

 and already too much of the soil of the newer ones, has become 

 exhausted by constant cropping. The natural productions of 

 the earth are diminished ; and crops which grew luxuriantly 

 ;with easy cultivation a century ago, now require the most care- 

 ful husbandry and a judicious application of manures. An 

 acre of land in Massachusetts to-day, will probably absorb in 

 cultivation for most crops, five times as much money, in labor, 

 cost of manure, cost of seed and interest on capital, as it would 

 fifty years ago. The business of fertilizing has become a most 

 important one. The difficulty experienced in obtaining barn- 

 yard manure, the cost of transporting so bulky a material, and 

 the labor required in handling it, are now serious obstacles in 

 the way of using this manure at all — obstacles which our ances- 

 tors hardly considered. And all the chemical ingenuity of 

 man is employed in finding a substitute. 



The cost of food for cattle, and the deterioration of our pas- 

 tures, combine to rend,er the business of cattle-feeding one in 

 which the wisest calculations must be made, and the most 

 skilful selection of animals, if we hope for any reward. It 

 would be impossible to reap any profit from the misshapen ani- 

 mals of the last century, fed in barns when hay and grain 

 command the present market value, or on pastures whose 

 herbage has been reduced in quantity and perhaps in quality by 

 long feeding. It has been found necessary, therefore, to create 

 animals adapted to the rapid production of beef in order that a 

 pound of meat might be obtained with the lowest possible con- 

 sumption of food. Modern skill has accomplished this, and it 

 has also provided us with an animal for our dairies, capable of 

 furnishing large returns in milk for the amount of food con- 

 sumed, and capable also of providing for herself easily and 

 rapidly on a short pasture. 



The demands of the markets have materially changed 

 within the lifetime of many now before me. Within a few 

 miles of our cities and large towns, the market-garden is the 

 chief source of profit to the farmer, and in supplying this he is 



