No. 216] 545 



inconveniently subdivide like those of France, we certainly exhibit 

 a country generally well and skilfully cultivated, though not strained 

 to its utmost capacity; and we have no want of enlightened and 

 liberal men, who make agriculture a study, and devote their time and 

 their means in experiments and investigations to its advancement 

 and improvement. Indeed, we may safely say, that if the generality 

 were as ready to adopt successful inventions and use fortunate dis- 

 coveries as the more spirited and enlightened among us are to make 

 them, there would be seen a great improvement still in our fields and 

 farms. 



But prejudices have to be met and overcome; the experimentalist, 

 a name almost as ill received, and as unjustly so too, as that of the 

 -speculator, is sneered at by many, and coldly and distrustingly re- 

 ceived by most; he is looked upon as reformers usually are. He 

 startles us, disturbs our self-content and complacency, and seems to 

 urge us to an inconvenient acceleration of progress. If, after much 

 labor and expense, he succeeds in any of his attempts at the discov- 

 ery or invention of improvements, they are adopted with much re- 

 luctance, and his example followed with great delay. Gf this almost 

 •every one's experience will furnish some instance, and my own very 

 limited knowledge affords one, perhaps not out of place. 



In a part of this countr}', near the sea, where the land is sandy, 

 and dry, and poor, there is, among many other similar, a farm on 

 which the owner raises a little stinted crop, growing out of pebbly 

 bills, dotted here and there with small black spots of manure, that 

 itself needs manuring. A neighbor of his, a little more inventive, 

 and not quite contented with the parsimonious gifts of the needy soil, 

 by applying seaweed and fish, which the generous ocean furnishes 

 in great abundance, manages with little expense to make his crops ^ 

 flourish green. and strong. The individual first referred to, was asked 

 one day why he did not imitate his neighbor, and avail himself of 

 the supplies to which his position gave him ready access, and apply 

 £sh or kelp to his sand hills? His answer was, that he thought, on 

 the whole, that kelp was a hot, forcing thing, that did not last, and 

 that fish poisoned the land. And I suppose that at about this time 

 of the year he is gathering his crop of fifteen or twenty busnels of 

 corn to the acre, while some of his neighbors have "forced " and 

 ^' poisoned " their lands with seaweed and fish, into bearing seventy 

 or eighty. 



£Am. Inst.J KK 



