184 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Commonwealth, and want to carry back a little information 

 that is practical. I believe in theory, but when theory and 

 practice come together it is well, and that is very encour- 

 aging to us. When we farmers speak of our practice and 

 tind it corroborated by the experience of others, we feel 

 better about it. I have had the same experience with the 

 essayist, in that I could not afford to pay a miller to grind 

 my corn, hence in raising that crop I have leaned in favor 

 of sweet corn ; and I have also leaned in the direction of 

 putting the plough in and destroying the bushes, and turning 

 these stones into drains. A year ago this fall I began work 

 on a pasture bordering on a swamp, where there were a great 

 many hardbacks. The hardbacks come up like white birches, 

 while you sleep. I said I could not bear that condition of 

 things any longer, — this wild grass and hardback in my 

 pasture. I got up a little courage and started in and ploughed 

 up a1)out fifteen acres. I broke up all the stone that I could, 

 having a good stout man, with a sledge, and they were 

 mostly laid in a drain. Without multiplying words, I may 

 say, in confirmation of these gentlemen who have spoken about 

 breaking up the land, that when I passed through the fields 

 of my neighbors this summer I saw small crops withering 

 under the sun, while on that low, heavy land that I drained 

 were the heaviest crops of corn, potatoes and buckwheat that 

 I ever saw in my life, — and we do sometimes have good 

 crops out in old Berkshire. The president of the old Berk- 

 shire Agricultural Society said, " You have turned that old 

 pasture, that was not worth one cent to you, into land worth 

 one hundred dollars an acre." Those were his words. There 

 is a stimulus, as the lecturer said yesterday, in this kind of 

 work. Let us stimulate our boys to go into this work. Let 

 us take them — I mean after we give them a good education 

 at Amherst — and make these waste places blossom like the 

 rose. Then we can keep our boys on these New England 

 hills, and we can vie with our brothers in the West, and 

 raise our own crops on the field, and our own crops of boys 

 and girls worthy of these old pilgrim shores of eastern 

 Massachusetts. 



Mr. CoE (of Hingham). Mr. Chairman, I have done a 

 little clearing up of land in the way of removing stones, 



