ADDRESS, 



BY REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, D. D., OF WEST ROXBURY. 



I do not intend, to-dav, to teach Farmers anvthin"; about farm- 

 ing, I am not so presumptuous. All that I could say about ag- 

 riculture, its uses, history, methods ; all that I could tell you about 

 fertilizers, rotation of crops, mowers and reapers, breeding of cat- 

 tle, and the like, you know already better than I can tell you. I 

 am no farmer, though I own a farm, and a somewhat famous one 

 in this county. Perhaps it is to this circumstance that I owe the 

 honor of being invited to address you to-day — for I cannot tell to 

 what else I owe it. It is true that I succeed every year in rais- 

 ing a few strawberries and Lima beans, a few grapes and pears ; 

 but when I think of Dr. Loring's farm, at Salem, and Marshall P. 

 Wilder's fruit-trees, in Dorchester, I feel ashamed to speak to 

 such a company as this. I am rather ashamed of myself for 

 not knowing more about farming, for I lived, when a boy, on a 

 farm in Newton, belonging to Dr. Freeman, who was very curious 

 in the matter of early vegetables ; and who may be said to have 

 introduced the tomato into New England ; whose sweet corn en- 

 joyed a certain local celebrity ; and who published, in 1805, in the 

 magazine of the Agricultural Society, an account of experiments, 

 showing the importance of selecting the first ripe seeds, by which 

 he shortened the time of ripening the caseknife bean from one 

 hundred and twelve days to eighty-five, making it come one month 

 earlier — an experiment still sometimes referred to. 



I am the owner of Brook Farm — and though I have never per- 

 sonally cultivated it, and have never gathered from it anything but 

 a tax bill, some hay, and an occasional crop of metaphors for ray 



