MR. braman's address. 31 



Ihe mysteries of vegetation. Elaborate treatises on agricultur- 

 al chemistry, by distinguished authors, have applied the pro- 

 found discoveries of philosophy to the homely toils of the 

 field. President Hitchcock has described three hundred and 

 fifty European agricultural schools. Even Ireland, with a 

 territory not much larger than that of Maine, contains fifty in 

 prosperous operation, to teach the art of cultivating the pota- 

 to. Associations for exhibition and improvement, public jour- 

 nals devoted to agriculture for the purpose of diffusing light 

 and awakening interest, are extensively prevalent, and bearing 

 with united and mighty effect on the interests to which they 

 are devoted, will almost spread a new soil over the face of the 

 world. 



It seems as if divine Providence, by directing so much tal- 

 =ent and knowledge, and power and wealth, into the channels 

 of agricultural improvement, is preparing the way for some 

 new era in the history of the world. There is a career now 

 opened to whose brilliant prospects no mind can set limits. 

 The resources and capacities of the tilled ground will be mul- 

 tiplied beyond all the visions of the most lively imagination ; 

 the richest lands will add a thousand fold to their former ex- 

 uberance ; hard and penurious soils v/ill teem with luxuriant 

 products, and stones and sand will be transmuted by the magic 

 of science into fertile fields, waving with golden harvests. 

 Perhaps those immense wastes of the earth, where nothing has 

 grown since creation, will be reclaimed to industry and culti- 

 vation. Perhaps that vast desert in northern Africa will be 

 subdued to the use of man, and its three millions ©f square 

 miles of burning sand be converted into tillage and ver- 

 dure, resounding with the voices of a happy people instead 

 of echoing the roar of the ferocious beasts, v/ho roam over its 

 -trackless surface. 



2. Some of the most potent obstructions to the culture of 

 the soil are giving signs of removal. Tyrannical power is on 

 the wane in every part of the globe. The bases of despotic 

 thrones are tottering over the upheaving masses beneath ihem. 

 Humanity is recovering its rights, and the soil its freedom, and 

 ihose fertile regions so blessed by God, and blighted by man, 



