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niggardly and parsimonious system with his farm, has no rea- 

 son to expect that his farm will yield to him bountifully of its 

 products. It won't do to starve it, and then expect it to do 

 the work of one that is strong and well fed. It is no use to 

 expect a farm to thrive on mere husks ; the storm-beaten and 

 sun-dried excretions of cattle thrown out of a hole in the side 

 of the barn, exposed to the alternate drenching of rain and 

 scorching of the sun, will not satisfy the natural cravings of 

 the soil ; and however strong may be the constitution of your 

 land, you will find it in the end getting low and weak on that 

 kind of diet. It will then require strong stimulants to keep it 

 at work up even to a moderate production. It is pretty poor 

 economy that will stint good land until it becomes so weak that 

 it can hardly hold up a ton of hay to the acre ; yet in Massa- 

 chusetts the strength of the land has been reduced by this kind 

 of management so that the average yield of hay is less than a 

 ton per acre. This kind of farming is not the kind that pays 

 large wages to the laborer on a high rate of interest to the capital 

 invested. Economy requires that your lands be kept in good 

 heart, improving in quality year by year. To do this, if you 

 sell hay, you must purchase manures ; if your land is wet, you 

 must not be afraid of the expense of labor and material 

 to drain it ; if it is cold, you must warm it with stimulants. 

 All this takes money, and money thus expended, even in large 

 amounts, is good economy, and in the end the investments will 

 pay large dividends. 



If our farmers owning their lands in fee, had half the cou- 

 rage of some of the tenant farmers in Europe, we should see a 

 vast difference in the looks of our fields ; in the size and num- 

 ber of our out-buildings and barns ; in the number of cows in 

 in our yards ; in the weight and condition of our market cat- 

 tle. Then agriculture would not be so far behind manufiicture 

 in profits and general success. It was said by the Duke of 

 Argyle in the speech before referred to, *' That no country in 

 the world had advanced so rapidly in the science and practice 

 of agriculture as Scotland, during the last century ; and that 

 3 



