PROCEEDIXGS OF THE FARMERS' ClUB. 425 



Mr. Fuller or Dr. Ilexamer, as the best authority on any question 

 whicli they have fully and fiiirly investigated. For the analysis 

 of ash or plants, leaves, fruits, or earths, in Dr. Feuchtwanger, in Prof. 

 Tillman, and in Mri J. A. Whitney we have gentlemen capable of 

 giving a valuable and scientific opinion on questions of agricultural 

 chemistry, \yitli such facilities as we have for spreading, ideas, we 

 ought to be a metropolitan head-center for whatever is new ; whatever 

 is sound ; whatever is helpful and of good report in the science of 

 tillage, and in all rural economy. There is here given us what so 

 many able men have struggled for in vain ; what so many shrewd 

 men have failed to create ; what no wise man ever refused to embrace 

 — a fair opjportunity . 



Mr. P. T. Quinn.— There is one subject, or rather one name in the 

 remarks that have been made which I cannot allow to pass without 

 one word of grateful comment from me. It is true, as the speakers 

 have said, that Professoi' Mapes was a pioneer and reformer in agri- 

 culture. As early as 1840, and constantly from IS'iS till his death, 

 nearly three years ago, Mr. Mapes was insisting on the importance of 

 estimating land, not by superficial area, but by cubical dimensions. 

 For spreading acres he cared little. His question was ever for the 

 depth of a soil. Of the professor, as a man and a friend, it is not for 

 me here to speak. I cannot, for my heart is full. This I will say : 

 The more I till the soil, the more I study the crops, the oftener I am 

 reminded of wise, sagacious, prophetic remarks that he was often 

 making. In the doubts and difficulties of farming I find by recalling 

 or re-reading wha.t he said, that his clear mind had been before me, 

 anticipating the doubts, marking all the shoal waters, and sounding 

 all the deep places of agriculture. He always loved and sustained 

 this club, and, of all tlie deceased members, those whose remains 

 slumber in the earth and whose spirits walk the green pastures above, 

 none, I am sure, would more rejoice to see the magnitude to which 

 we have grown, and the still more brilliant future that now opens 

 before us. 



Dr. Isaac P. Trimble. — Mr. Chairman, have we got done witli this 

 mutual admiration business. 



Mr. James A. Whitney. — I hope the time will never come, Mr. 

 Chairman, when w^e shall have done with a just and temperate admi- 

 ration for those living who labor for tlie promotion of interests so 

 vital, nor with reverence for the dead who rest from the rural labors, 

 and whose works do follow them. For my part, I deem it wholesome 



