ADDRESS 



lows of ripened wheat ; no perennial verdure shall 

 clothe your fields while the full year completes its 

 round. Nor have those other fruits of skies that ever 

 smile and lands that ever bloom, ignorance and indo- 

 lence and pauperism, yet reared their heads amidst all 

 the long two centuries of your tillage. Your sons have 

 left your firesides to seek the broader and easier culture 

 of the West ; thither, as old England has sent her 

 better breeds of cattle, so New England has sent her 

 better breed of men : it remains to be proven whether 

 in their new abode the latter, like the former, will 

 improve upon the original type. 



If, then, the chief end of New England farming had 

 been to deal with men, mentally, something as Bake- 

 well did with cattle and sheep, physically, beginning 

 from so excellent a starting point, and furnishing for 

 the free expansion of every native energy, influences 

 so bracing and self-sustaining, while we might accord 

 to such an agriculture, a rank still more exalted than 

 to that of the famous English breeder, — still, as our race, 

 unlike those in Bakewell's hands, is said to be perfected 

 only through much tribulation, we might not end by 

 placing the actual attractions of New England farming, 

 for more selfish purposes, in a very winning light. 

 And it is with the other and more immediate objects 

 of the farm that we are to deal — as the scene of 

 toil, indeed, but as affording opportunities, which we 

 believe to be worthy of closer study and more zealous 

 exertion, of securing a fair reward for that toil — oppor- 

 tunities moreover, which it is the design of a Society 

 like this to bring to yet fuller development and to 

 place still more readily within the comprehension and 

 attainment of its members. 



