20 



ADDRESS 



breeders as familiar to-day on the banks of the Danube 

 and the Loire, in Australia and New Zealand and Cali- 

 fornia, as they are here in Massachusetts, on the blue 

 grass pastures of Kentucky, or the prairies of Ohio and 

 Illinois. Your accomplished and practical Secretary 

 Mr. Wyman, expressed the truth which you must often 

 have realized in your own labors on the farm, when he 

 wrote to the Country Gentleman six years ago, that 

 the foundation of all successful culture lies in the prep- 

 aration and application of an ample supply of manurial 

 material, and that every sort of article which can be 

 made to contribute toward this end, should be saved 

 "as carefully as if they were grains of gold." 



The course of English farming, not less than various 

 experiments conducted there and here, shows that in 

 nothing else do we get a more effective combination, or 

 one more universally applicable, than in the well 

 managed manures of the farm yard. And the point to 

 which I wish to ask your especial attention is whether 

 you cannot more economically purchase such feeding 

 material for the stock you intend to fatten, as is most 

 readily attainable, and take more pains to produce 

 crops for them — such for example, as fodder corn, the 

 legumes and the roots, than you can to expend your 

 money on the fraternity of superphosphates, poudrettes 

 and the like? These will doubtless give the farmer 

 a start in securing a position at which he can eventually 

 furnish fertilizing material to supply his own wants ; 

 there are crops, such as roots, and some partially 

 exhausted pastures, on which preparations of bones may 

 be profitably applied in any case, but the great question 

 is to reach such a system of management by the 

 grazing and feeding of stock, as shall develop the 



