AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



PUBLISHED BV JOSEPH BRECK &, CO., NO 52 NORTH MARKET STREET, (Agbicoltubal Wakehouse.) 



VOL. XV'Il.J 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MARCH C, 1839. 



[NO. 35 



N , E. FARMER. 



AN ADDRESS, 



Ddivered at the AiinuaJ. Cattle Shows of the Jfor- 

 cestcr and the Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin 

 Agricultural Societies, Massachusetts. October, 

 1838. By Henry Colman, Commissioner for 

 the ,f}gricultural Surrey of the State. 

 This address is published in the New England Farmer 



it the request of the Worcester Agricultural Society as 



:ommuninated in their vote. 



Mr President, and Gentlemen of the Ae- 

 ucuLTURAL Societv : Among the subjects of 

 ippropriate considerations on such an occasion as 

 his, it is difficult to select any one, the full discus- 

 lion of which would not e.\ceed the limits to which 

 he crowded engagements of the day oblige me to 

 estrict myself. I can promise nothing more than 

 I few hints for other minds to work up at their 

 )leasure. 



Our social duties and obligations devolve upon 

 IS a serious responsibility. A man among men 

 hould remember that every thing human concerns 

 lim. The privileged citizen of a free community, 

 )wes to that community the ardent and active de- 

 'otion of his affections and talents to its welfare 

 lonor, improveme'nt and prosperity. " The country 

 ■xpects every man to|do his duty." 



In passing a few days since through a pine for- 

 ;st, I was led to admire the enormous size of some 

 int hills, raised by these most humble but indefat- 

 gable laborers. To them they were like Egyptian 

 lyramids tons. During the last week a skilful 

 ipiarian showed me his bee-hive. The glass sides 

 idmitted of an int^pection of its wonderful interior, 

 ts perfect architecture, its hurrying, active, happy 

 jopulation, and their vast accumulations of wealth 

 ;o use and to spare ; vast indeed compared with 

 ;he capacities of the agents by whom tkese ac- 

 jumulations were made. 



} Two years since, I traversed the great Erie ca- 

 inal from one end to the othex; I floated on the 

 waters of the Ohio canal ; and I returned to the 

 sea shore by the Pittsburgh and Pemisylvania ca- 

 nals and rail-roads. What a magnificent excur- 

 sion ! What mighty triumphs of art and labor are 

 here. What a moving of the affections! what an 

 expanding of the imagination ! How many beau- 

 tiful and splendid visions have floated before the 

 mind, which were here surpassed by the great re- 

 .alities. Here were mountains levelled and valleys 

 ifilled. Here were deep basins excavated, and noble 

 'and long-stretching embankments, which rivalled 

 the neighboring hills. Here were rivers, hundreds 

 of miles in length, flowing at man's pleasure, and in 

 channels formed by his hands. Here were streams 

 Icrossing streams on beautifully arched aqueducts. 

 Here were mountains of granite pierced through 

 and through, and a passage opened through the 

 heart of adamantine barriers for vehicles freighted 

 with human life. Here were deep inland oceans 

 mingling their waters with the mighty sea that 

 sweeps from pole to pole; and bearing upon their 



quiet tides ten thousand floating and deeply laden 

 arks ; myriads of human beings, active in the pur- 

 suits of business or pleasure; accumulations of 

 wealth from tlio deep and tangled recesses of the 

 forest, now first springing into life under the touch 

 of civilization, from the glittering fields of polar 

 ice, and from the shores of the Western Ocean ; 

 accumulations, whose growing extent defies all cal- 

 culation. All this, ton, is the work of a little ani- 

 mal of the ^ordinary height of sixty inches, with 

 only two feet and two hands, and of an average 

 duration of life less than twenty years. His mighty 

 implements in these great exploits, were only a 

 kind of Robinson-Crusoe assortment, a hoe, a pick- 

 axe, and a spade. Sucli are the great results of 

 intelligent, concentrated,perseveringlabor; achieve- 

 ments of our own times, and scarcely a quarter of 

 a century old. 



These results are wonderful. They are no mi- 

 raculous creation. They are the fruits of the la- 

 bor of individuals, applied in its most minute forms, 

 and at successive time:;. When De Witt Clinton 

 first struck a spade little bigger than a man's two 

 hands into the ground ; and said, " This shall bring 

 the mighty waters of Lake Superior into the ocean, 

 and the vast, and as yet unimagined treasures of 

 the great West shall float upon their descending 

 current," few minds could believe that this was 

 any other than " such stuff as dreams are made of." 

 But the prediction was accomplished and in his day. 

 The thundering cannon never sent a more electri- 

 fying peal, than when its successive acclamations 

 along the whole bright line announced, that the 

 nuptial union between the vast lakes of the north, 

 and the beautiful Atlantic was consummated. 

 Never was a gladder note poured into the patriot's 

 ear since the Declaration of 177(5, than the assur- 

 ance which then fell upon it, that these internal 

 communications, these glittering silver bands, were 

 to form the strong bonds of friendly union and 

 sympathy with those distant territories now brought 

 intosuch near conjunction ; territories before scarce- 

 ly known to each other by name, now shaking 

 hands with each other as next-door neighbors. 



Such are the great results of Labor. How can 

 I better occupy the short time with which you are 

 kind enough to indulge me, than in speaking more 

 about this mighty agent in the affairs of men ; and 

 especiallv in ils reference to the cultivation of the 

 earth, that great art, the basis of all other arts, 

 whose festival we this day celebrate. What fur- 

 ther I have to say, then, shall be about labor ; ag- 

 ricultural labor ; labor in Massachusetts. 



Massachusetts ! what delightful and precious 

 associations cluster around that honored name. II 

 there is no poetry, there is to the children of Mas- 

 sachusetts always music in the name ; and if the 

 poets never could weave it into verse, where is there 

 a true son of this mother, who has not felt the very 

 name — especially if heard in a foreign land, — 

 strike, with a touch of melody, the chords of the 

 soul ? 



Massachusetts is with many a despised land. 

 Many will tell you with disdain that " her territory 



is little larger than a pocket handkerchief; irregu- 

 lar in its shape ; on the east like a long man in a 

 Procrustean bed, not daring to stretch himself at 

 full length ; on the west rising into almost inac- 

 cessible mountains, bristling with firs. Here are 

 wide tracts of blowing sand ; and here again long 

 extended and solitary pitch-pine plains. Here 

 deep and undrained morasses, and there piles of 

 granite, or rolling boulders, or fields covered as 

 thickly with stones es a recently dug and unpicked 

 patch of potatoes with its produce." Then, too, 

 they continue ; " the soil is thin and cold ; it yields 

 nothing but by hard labor and incessant manuring ; 

 and the wretched people must work or starve. The 

 climate, too, is dreadful. There are the cold cast 

 winds in the spring, which come over you like the 

 scraping of a new-filed saw ; the bitter north- 

 westers, which try the firmness of your muscles ; 

 and the early autumnal frosts, and the driving and 

 bristled poolW, which so often, without any rever- 

 ence for ."pprsona, comes between the wind and 

 your nobiliby. And then, too, the people ; what 

 are they but a pack of workers, rough-handed far- 

 mers, mechanics, shoemakers, manufacturers, and 

 traders, and their vulgar wives and daughters, who 

 condescend to use their needles and dabble in soap 

 suds, and presume to come from the kitchen into 

 the parlor ; so that a chivalrous gentleman of the 

 genuine cockney tamp and of the last impiession, 

 finds himself as little at home among them as tlia 

 monkey of the menagerie in his regimentals, when 

 he found himself in the farmer's cattle yard. Then 

 comes their insuflerable ambition. Why there is 

 not a mother that is not dreaming of it, nor a father 

 that is not working hard that his son may be qual- 

 ified to be Governor of the Commonwealth, or a 

 delegate to Congress, or perhaps rise as high as to 

 be member of the General Court and .Tustice of 

 the Peace." Such are the terms in which some 

 men would portray our beloved Commonwealth. 

 Now allow a son of hers — would to heaven he 

 were worthy of his descent, — to speak of her as in 

 truth he can ; but that must be very different from 

 what he would if he had the power to do her jus- 

 tice. 



The territory of Massachusetts is comparatively 

 small ; but it is capable of sustaining from its own 

 products in ease and comfort a population four 

 times as great as now inhabits it. Look at her pro- 

 ductive industry in the mechanic arts! Who, be- 

 fore the ascertainment of the fact, could have im- 

 agined that the annual value of her domestic man- 

 ufactures exceeded ninety millions of dollars .' The 

 amount of her agricultural productions, could its 

 statistics be ascertained, would present as astound- 

 ing results. Yet the development of her agricul- 

 tural resources and capacities has hardly been be- 

 gun. Let us look at one of the most populous 

 counties in the state of an agricultural character. 

 The whole number of acres in the county of Essex 

 exceeds two hundred an 1 seventy thousand. Of 

 this only fourteen thousand are under tillag:e. Only 

 ten thousand, exclusive of that which is in roads 

 or water, are considered as unimprovable ; but 



