422 Transactions of the American Institute. 



but most efficient secretary (Mr. Chambers) to bless as many jSelds 

 and gardens, shall be doubled in number and in beneficence to the 

 masses tliroughout the land. And tliis club, sir, is destined to be 

 more and more useful to this countr}^ and the world. Future genera- 

 tions will acknowledge the vast usefulness which you have so gener- 

 ously aided it to accomplish. Some poet will be found saying of 

 those who meet here, as Emerson said of the farmer heroes at the 

 battle of Concord, 



" Here once the embattled farmers stood, 

 And fired the shots heard round the world ! " ^ 



The chairman made a happy impromptu speecli, though he was at 

 some disadvantage, for the atfair was a surprise, and the other speak- 

 ers were all well prepared. He referred to the experience he had 

 acquired in presiding over several municipal bodies in this city who 

 had presented him with similar marks of respect, but none were so 

 much valtied by him as this evidence of the respect of the American 

 Institute Farmers' Club. No circumstance, he said, was more affect- 

 ing than the constant reminder he had, in the handle of the gavel, of 

 that pioneer of sound and high farming. Professor Mapes, whom he 

 respected as much as any living or any deceased member of the club, 



J. B. Lyman. — Mr. Chairman, an occasion just like this may not 

 return again for many sessions of this clul) ; and as the words we 

 utter here, be they wise or foolisli, are generally printed, and reach a 

 very large rural audience, j^ou will excuse me if I refer to this manu- 

 script in order to give exactness to what I may say. We are enter- 

 ing upon a new and noble epoch in the art and science of agriculture 

 on this continent. Until the middle of this century, the vast extent 

 of fresh soil, rich with the forest mold of ages, guiltless of the plow, 

 and cheap almost as water or sunlight, took .awa}' the necessity for 

 care and skill in our tillage. What matter if the old farm wore out ; 

 an acre of new land did not cost as much as a pair of kid gloves. 

 Increase and influx of people, with multiplied railroads, have changed 

 all this. There is no great amount of land in desirable locations that 

 is now cheap. We must, then, cling to the ancestral tract, and learn 

 to work with wisdom, and art, and science, what our fathers cultivated 

 with rude and primitive tillage. The growth of great metropolitan cen- 

 ters has also changed the relative value of agricultural lands. When 

 New York had only 100,000 mouths to feed, a man was a dolt to 

 linger under the pine sapplings of south Jersey, when he could get 

 fifty acres in Genesee or Wabash valley for $100. Now, when New 



