8 



the early settlers. But if he is a man of intelligence, he knows 

 that nowhere else in our land is the science of Agriculture so thor- 

 oughly vinderstood and applied. Had we been shut out from the 

 fertile West, we should have known more than we now do, and 

 New England soil would have been richer and more productive 

 than it is to-day. 



But we proudly point to the products that are now gathered in 

 every part of our State, from Plymouth to Berkshire, as proof of 

 Yankee skill in wringing from a scanty soil the choicest fruits and 

 golden corn. Luxuriant crops and the finest herds and flocks are 

 here on exhibition'. And if we have not the abundance of our 

 Western brethren, we glory in our crops as the product of thought 

 and labor. 



The time is coming when the deep soils of the West and South 

 will have yielded their superabundant riches, and, like New Eng- 

 land soil, will demand the fostering care of Agricultural science. 

 The time is coming when the broad plantation, once growing 

 poorer under the impoverishing curse of slavery, and the roHing 

 prairie starved by years of robbery, shall be the homes of busy 

 milHons, intelligent freemen, cutting them into small farms, and 

 reproducing in every part of the national domain something of the 

 New England type of life. 



It is then for New England, it is for this great country of ours 

 in the future, that we invoke all that science and skill can do to 

 increase the fertility of our soil and the variety of our products, 

 that in our own limits there may be found all that the highest 

 civilization demands, though the rest of the world were sunk 

 beneath the ocean, or lea<rued together in arms aaainst us. And 

 where shall we look for the field of thought and the line of discov- 

 ery that shall do for agriculture what has been done by inventive 

 skill to utilize labor in all the mechanical arts ? -We want some- 

 thing more than mowers and reapers and shellers ; mo're than im- 

 proved implements for putting in and taking off crops. These may 

 satisfy those who have never learned that land can be exhausted. 

 But we want to prepare a soil to produce every crop ; we want 

 our fruits to be the most delicious, our grains the most proliSc, 

 our herds and flocks to be the finest in form and quality. Here 

 lies the farmer's great sphere for utilizing labor, to secure a soil 



