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speak, realize the full import of their words ? Permit tliis to 

 become the current sentiment, and New England will cease to be 

 an agricultural community, with now and then an exceptional 

 locality ; and her farms, neighborhoods and towns even, which 

 once bore an intelligent and pious yeomanry that constituted its 

 crowning characteristic and made it honored, not merely among 

 the other States of the Union, but throughout Christendom, shall 

 pass into other hands, alien in spirit and manners, and without 

 sympathy with what we and our fathers have most highly prized. 

 I cannot pass through some neighborhoods of this town without 

 feeling that, in them, this work has already commenced. 



Such a result is not only to be deprecated, but it must be pre- 

 vented. These worn out fields must not be given up to wood. 

 They must be reclaimed. But how ? As I have already remarked, 

 by the application of science and well conducted experiments. 

 " Our muck swamps," sa^^s Prof. Porter, " are basins which God 

 set long ago among our mountains, to catch the wasting fertility 

 of their declivities and preserve them for the use of later genera- 

 tions. Science must tell us how to use these treasures. They 

 are the wardrobes whence are to come garments for the granite 

 ribs of our mountains. Science must tell us how to unfold these 

 vestments and re-array our hills in beauty and fertihty. And 

 we need science not alone even in the subjugation of unproduc- 

 tive soils, but at every step of their cultivation." 



Farming demands mutual co-operation. It is not only a 

 great and important matter, but one invested with difficulties. 

 " Agiculture," says Lavergne, " is the most beautiful of arts, and 

 at the same time, the most difficult." Farmers, then, need each 

 other's sympathy and help. They should bring the results of 

 their reading, observation and experience, to a common centre, 

 where each may draw from the common stock. This has been 

 done, in a measure, and on a large scale for a long time. The 

 " Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture," was 

 incorporated in 1792. County Societies had long existed, and 

 for some time, they have been under the patronage of the State, 

 Other States have similar institutions. A national society has 

 been formed. Agricultural schools, model farms, and lectures on 

 agriculture in several of our colleges, bespeak the general and 

 growing interest in the subject. 



And yet it seems to me, that, with all their admitted excellen- 

 cies, they have this serious defect. They are, and necessarily 

 must be, in the hands of the few, and these, the more intelligent 

 and already interested. They seem to be j ractically above, and 

 out of the track of, the common farmer, for Avhose benefit they 

 are professedly designed. Do we not need smaller organizations, 

 which shall embrace the farmers of a single town, who shall find 

 in them a common bond of union, while by th<)ir regular meetings, 



