ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 45 



GENEKAL FAEMING IN CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 



HON. E. E. CHESTER, CHAMPAIGN 



Had your committee of arrangements assigned this subject, General 

 Farming, to one more fruitful in ideas, richer in experience, and with less of 

 human prejudice in favor of accustomed ways and usages, they would have 

 done this audience an extreme act of kindness. Probably no class of people 

 have a better appreciation of their own notions of propriety than the general 

 farmer, and the few thoughts that I shall present will be from the stand- 

 point of one who has never strayed very far from the customs of this fortieth 

 parellel of latitude in a business way. Your committee has been kind to me, 

 in giving a well worn subject, and confining me to the largest body of very 

 fertile land in any of the states in our Union. I should hardly err, if I said, 

 that this Second Judicial district of Illinois contained more acres especially 

 adapted to the varied products of its climate than any other of equal area 

 in the world, not excepting the newly discovered and untried interior of 

 Africa. 



The fame of the prairies of Illinois are world-wide ; famous not only 

 for this wonderful productiveness when judiciously cultivated, but for the 

 short space of time in which they have been changed from huntiug grounds 

 to fruitful fields. Within the memory of some of my hearers, its wild and 

 dreary stretches of prairie, broken only by belts of timber that border its 

 streams, and the occasional hut of the frontiersman, have been superceded 

 by well tilled farms, on which are many happy homes, enjoyed by an in- 

 dustrious and prosperous people, scracely one quarter section of this but 

 is contributing to the comfort of its owners as well as to the wealth of the 

 nation. 



Had the name given to this county of Champaign (meaning a level 

 plain) been given to the whole of this territory, it would have been no mis- 

 nomer. In fact a portion of these lands are too flat to produce abundant 

 crops during the wet seasons, but fortunately the introduction of the use 

 of drain tile, just at the right time, (as all the great public benefactors are 

 introduced, at the right time) is making these the more desirable lands on 

 account of their productiveness. Farmers of central Illinois have learned 

 that no investment they can make pays greater dividends than money in- 

 vested in draining their lands. Not only are they adding to their capital 

 stock, — in many instances a dividend of one hundred per cent, per annum 

 is returned them in additional crops. Too much stress cannot well be put 

 on the importance of thoroughly draining all surface matter from our farm 

 lands. Standing or st agnant water is a damage to all plant growth, at least to 

 all farm crop growth. Well laid tile, of suflacient depth and size, will re- 

 move all possible damage from water, and retain the moisture in the soil 

 from which plant growth alone receives benefit from rain-fall. If there is to 

 be a millenial age for the tillers of the soil in which there is to be neither 

 flood, drought or pestilence, long strides towards it are being made by the 

 flowing of water, in the thousands of miles of artificfal courses being laid 

 as if by magic, under our farms. There is a mania with a few farmers for 

 fast horses, for slow horses of great size, for great milking, and great grow- 



