14 HAMPSHIBE AGRICULTTJEAL SOCIETY. 



and to spare. It appears from the recent report of the Valuation 

 Committee of Massachusetts, that if forests be excluded, not more 

 than one fourth of her remaining improvable territory is under cul- 

 tivation. If the other three fourths were only as highly improved, 

 her agricultural products would be quadrupled ; but much of it is 

 capable of higher cultivation, and of producing crops many times 

 larger than the present amount. This would enable her to sustain a 

 population of many millions. 



Away then with the apprehension that New England cannot sus- 

 tain, by her agricultural products, her swarming population ! She 

 may not only greatly multiply her present crops, but introduce other 

 products equally important with any now under cultivation. What a 

 vast amount of trade has resulted by the introduction of flax from 

 Egypt, which by recent improvements in mechanical and chemical 

 science, may yet become as important to the free labor of the North, 

 as cotton is to the slave labor of the South ! What an amount of com- 

 merce has been created by the introduction of the Mulberry from 

 Eastern Asia into Europe, which gives employment to millions, and 

 clothes other millions with their silken fabrics ! By the introduction 

 of the potato from South America, which has for ages fed the famish- 

 ing millions of Ireland, and the partial loss of which within a few 

 years, has produced starvation and misery in that ill-fated country, 

 and such pecuniary loss and lamentation through the civilized world ! 

 By the introduction of wheat which gives immense wealth to the ris- 

 ing empire of the West, freights innumerable cars, and ships, and 

 feeds millions in our own and in other countries. 



Science has already improved our agricultural productions, and will 

 continue to improve them. How much she has done for the potato. 

 Compare the original, small, black and acrid, with oiir numerous fair, 

 mealy, palatable varieties ! Hoav dissimilar in quality, flavor and 

 size ! Compare our luscious peaches, with the original species, the 

 almond, tough, dry and bitter ; — our magnificent apples with the sour 

 crab ; — our plum with the parent sloe ! The Bartlett and the Seckle 

 pear, the Green Gage plum, and the Bakhvin apple, were produced 

 from accidental seed ; but science teaches how to obtain new and rare 

 varieties, by hybridization, or crossing the existing varieties. This 

 art depends on the sexual character of plants, which was developed 

 by Linnseus one century ago, amidst that ridicule and scorn which 



