Exhibition Addresses. 149 



to obtain all the information required to bring his estate economically 

 into a condition of profit and beauty, so that the owning of land may 

 no longer be a burthen. While we witness with pleasure the increas- 

 ing air of thrift manifested in the formliouse and fields of our people, 

 we are always gratified by the drafts which the merchant and manu- 

 facturer are ready to make upon their incomes for the improvements 

 of their farms. And it is important that this money should be 

 invested to some profitable account, and not to please the taste alone 

 as an expensive luxury. 



I have stated that we are evidently advancing into a new era of 

 agriculture, in which the intelligence and ingenuity of man are to be 

 taxed in their eftbrts to bring this art to a systematic and well-directed 

 basis. The difticulties which may be overcome by scientific investi- 

 gation are, however, not the only ones which beset our path, and 

 which must be removed before we can reach any great degree of per- 

 fection and prosperity. There are in our modes of farming in 

 America, certain practical defects which must be overcome in a 

 practical way. In everything which relates to economy of labor and 

 means we are lamentably deficient. We use our forces and apply 

 our means in too wasteful a manner to secure for ourselves a constant 

 and liberal reward. I do not allude to the ordinary wastes of the 

 farm, so called, such as the loss of manure by exposure to the weather, 

 the neglect to use all articles which may be converted into fodder, 

 <fec. But I refer to the — 1. Misdirection of labor ; both hand and 

 machine labor ; 2. To the expensive modes of preparing and using 

 manures; 3. To the injudicious selection and manipulation of soils ; 4. 

 To bad choice and bad feeding of animals ; 5. To the too prevailing 

 indifi'erence with regard to the crops raised on the farm, whether fruit, 

 roots, grass or grain. I suppose it is hardly necessary for me to argue 

 here, that it is special farming which has become most satisfactory, 

 interesting and profitable. Mixed fiirming may be necessary to a cer- 

 tain extent everywhere, for the feeding of the family, and the supply 

 of certain wants in a local market. But it is devotion to special 

 crops in the Northern States — crops adapted to each locality — from 

 which the farmer now draws his largest revenues. The economical 

 production of milk, near our large cities; the growing of tobacco in 

 the valley of the Connecticut river; the cultivation of cranberries on 

 Cape Cod; of garden vegetables in the open air and under glass, in 

 all the populous Northeastern states; of potatoes in Maine; of 

 fruits, large and small, in New York and New Jersey ; of the onion 



