THE CULTIVATOR. 
157 
which “ connected the science with the practice of agricul¬ 
ture—which made gentlemen farmers, and farmers gentle¬ 
men—combining intellectual with physical power, and litera¬ 
ture with labor." Frederic expended a million annually lor 
these purposes, and said he considered it as manure spread 
upon the ground. In Paris a society has been formed which 
communicates with more than 200 local societies in France, 
receiving annually $100,000 from the public treasury. Ag¬ 
ricultural colleges have been established at St. Petersburgh 
and Moscow, in Prussia, Bavaria, Hungary, Wurtemburg, 
Ireland, France, and in Scotland, who effected her late as¬ 
tonishing improvements by her skilful agriculturists reduc¬ 
ing their practice to writing, thus establishing agriculture as 
a science. Fellenburg has a school in Switzerland with pu¬ 
pils from Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, 
North and South America. The Highland society in Scot¬ 
land has appropriated 500 sovereigns as a premium for the 
first successful application of steam-power to the cultivation 
of the soil, and premiums for other objects to the amount of 
$15,000. The agricultural condition both of England and 
Scotland, has been advanced to its present prosperity by the 
lights of science applied to the cultivation of the soils. The 
tour of Sir Arthur Young, to the continent in 1788-9, for the 
purpose of looking into the countries there under the best 
system of farming, produced the first decided advances in 
England to her present agricultural maturity and the perfec¬ 
tion to which the art has been brought in Scotland, is as¬ 
cribed chiefly to the endowment of an agricultural Board, 
through the influence and exertions of Sir John Sinclair. 
Agricultural societies are not now to be regarded as experi¬ 
ments : they are the peculiar privileges of modern times. Be¬ 
fore they were formed, in New-England and New-York, 10 
bushels of rye, 20 of corn, 200 of potatoes and one ton ot 
hay, was the average crop. Since premiums were offered, 
claims have been presented for having raised from 40 to 50 
bushels of rye, from 115 to 122 or corn, from 400 to 500 of 
potatoes and from 3 to 4 tons of hay. Massachusetts gives a 
bounty equal to the cost of manufacture upon the growth of 
silk, and upon manufacturing beets into sugar. After expe¬ 
riencing the benefit of a former appropriation she has voted 
to continue it. Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New-Jersey 
and Pennsylvania have also granted a bounty upon the growth 
of silk. Will these examples and these results be lost upon 
us 1 Will not the State as well as our farmers profit by the 
experience acquired in other States of the value derived from 
legislative encouragement, and ought not an agricutural sur¬ 
vey to follow the geological reconnoisance now in progress, 
which will develop the intimate relation between the mine¬ 
rals that the earth covers and the true method of cultivating 
its surface ? 
An improved state of husbandry in Kentucky, and the sys¬ 
tem of improved roads and navigation, will act with recip¬ 
rocal benefit upon each other; the roads and rivers will en¬ 
hance the price of agricultural products by the greater fa¬ 
cilities afforded in conveying them to market, and thus in¬ 
crease the revenue from tolls; while the increase in the pro¬ 
ducts of the soil will not only add to the tolls but will fur¬ 
nish an increased revenue, both from the value of the in¬ 
creased products and the increased value of the lands. For 
the want of any accurate statistical tables shewing the agri¬ 
cultural product of the whole State, it is impossible even to 
approximate to a correct estimate, but it is palpably evident 
that 10 per cent upon the amount would yield a large reve¬ 
nue, and will any sensible farmer doubt that our modes of 
cultivation may not be improved so as to add 20 or 50 per 
cent to the wealth of the State 1 And if, according to Pliny, 
Egypt with only 6000 square miles, at one time contained a 
population of 20,000,000 by reason of the immense fertility 
superinduced by the government leading canals from the Nile, 
what may not be the future destiny of Kentucky, with more 
than six times the territory, when her resources shall be de¬ 
veloped and invigorated by the same beneficent policy 1 Of 
the value of canals, or slack water navigation, which is 
more beneficial, upon the agricultural interests of a country, 
a striking illustration is given by Count Chaptal, a Peer of 
France, distinguished for his attainments in agricultural 
chemistry and his experience as a practical farmer, who tra¬ 
versing a barren part of Flanders, accompanying Napoleon, 
the latter expressed his surprise at a meeting of the council 
of the department, that so great a tract of land remained un¬ 
cultivated in so illustrious a nation. The answer was, “ If 
your Majesty will order a canal to be made through this dis¬ 
trict, we pledge ourselves that in five years it will all be 
converted into fertile fields.” The canal was ordered to be 
made without delay, and in less time than they promised, 
“ not an unproductive spot remained.” This was effected 
by means of the easy transportation upon the canal, of the 
manure from the rich districts. 
The chief magistrate, alluding in his last annual message 
to the deep interest which the State ought to cherish in the 
cause of internal improvement, uses the emphatic language 
that “Kentucky cannot stand still.” A noble sentiment! 
worthy indeed of a patriot, and which may be illustrated by 
reference to many pround periods in the history of the State. 
The soldiers of the revolution, who were the pioneers in 
planting the standard of liberty, law and civilization on this 
once “ dark and bloody ground,” rescuing it from the sav¬ 
age and from the forest, “ did not stand still.” In the se¬ 
cond war for independence waged in defence of commercial 
interests and of sailor's rights, of which she w T as not per¬ 
sonally the victim, Kentucky “ did not stand still;” her valor 
and her patriotism having signalized every field of blood from 
the shores of the lakes to the banks of the Mississippi.— 
“ Kentucky did not stand still” in the cause of human free¬ 
dom, whether she supposed that standard was unfurled 
among the children of the sun in the south, or on the classic 
shores of Greece; and now in this age of improvement, she 
stands ready to take her place among her enlightened sisters 
of the confederacy, by entering upon a noble career in re¬ 
ference to the high interest which the Governor elucidates 
with so much ability. But may we not hope that if the day 
has not already dawned, it is rapidly approaching, when she 
“ will not stand still” in efforts to advance the great cause of 
agriculture ? All the motives which may be sudposed to have 
influence in causing her march to be “ onward ” in relation to 
the cause of internal improvements, apply with equal force 
to the encouragement of her agricultural interests; for if the 
appropriation of seven millions of dollars to the construction 
of paved rail-roads and slack water navigation, be justly pre¬ 
dicated on the assumption that it will increase the wealth 
and consequently the revenue of the State, there can be no 
conceivable reason why an improved condition of agriculture, 
superinduced by the application of science to art, shall not 
demand of the legislative councils some display of the pub¬ 
lic bounty. The selfish as well as the more elevated motives 
which ought to prompt the farmer to adopt such methods and 
to seek such imformation as science imparts to the cultiva¬ 
tion of the soil, whereby an increased profit may attend his 
labors, address themselves with undiminished force to the le¬ 
gislative councils; for if, as in the case of Scotland and the 
New-England States, the endowment of agricultural socie¬ 
ties and professors, and the authorizing of agricultural sur¬ 
veys, should lead to a fourfold increase in the productions of 
the soil, the bounty granted by the state would be more than 
repaid in an increased revenue. But this subject is too trans¬ 
cendent in its beneficial influences, to be estimated merely 
by the dollars it would yield to the treasury of the state or 
of individuals. An improved condition of agriculture carries 
with it a train of blessings which money cannot purchase, in 
an increased intelligence and a higher toned morality in the 
mass of the people. In proportion as science shall shed its 
rays upon the path of the farmer; and in proportion as “ mind, 
the grand source of intellectual pleasure, the master power 
which abridges labor,” shall be exerted on the pursuits of 
agriculture, the character and dignity of the profession will 
be advanced, the sources of national strength will be de¬ 
veloped, and the indications of moral improvement will be 
visible in the public countenance. If it be contended that 
the plans which are in progress for the improvement of the 
soil partake of the character of experiments, and that there¬ 
fore the legislature should pause in granting aid, we may de¬ 
rive an instructive lesson from the history of the growth of 
cotton and of sugar. Fifty years ago it was not known that 
cotton would grow in the United States, but the experiment 
received the fostering care of government, and irom only 
200,000 pounds being exported in 1791, more than four hun¬ 
dred millions are exported at the present time. Then, its pro¬ 
duction was limited to one state—now, it is the staple oi 
seven, regulating by its price nearly every other production, 
and supplying, in addition to our own great and increasing 
demand, two-thirds of all that is used in foreign climes. In¬ 
deed, the culture and manufacture of cotton have now be¬ 
come the support of more than ten millions of the human 
race in Europe and America, and of more than fifty millions 
in Asia and Africa. A more recent experiment in Maine and 
Massachusetts, has served to exhibit the value ol legislative 
encouragement in aid of agriculture effort. Maine granted a 
bounty to the growth of wheat of $150,000, and a large 
bounty was given by Massachusetts upon the same article, 
at a period when her consumption of imported Hour amount- 
ted to $7,000,000. It is now ascertained that both these 
states will be able to export flour—the policy having origi¬ 
nated from the supposed fact that their inhospitable soil and 
climate W'ould not produce grain; but intelligent, scientific 
agriculturists, men whom the ignorant stigmatize as “book 
farmrs,’’ acted upon a different opinion, and its truth has 
been demonstrated in the fact lhat wheat has been success¬ 
fully grown in Maine, further north than Massachusetts, 
thus presenting another instance of the soundness of the 
maxim that experiment is the mother of improvement and im¬ 
provement is the true source of wealth. 
I cannot exaggerate to myself the importance which a free 
people should attach to agricultural periodicals and to agri¬ 
cultural education. All the valuable improvements in hus¬ 
bandry have been the result of scientific effort and of the 
wide spread dissemination of the opinion which the writings 
of the most eminent Romans inculcated, that the cultivation 
of the soil and of elegant letters were not incompatible pur¬ 
suits. By the application of the physical sciences, the won¬ 
derful creation of modem times, agriculture has become not 
merely a mechanical employment, but a science founded upon 
the process of induction from ascertained facts, and if a me¬ 
dical institute be entitled to legislative regard, the claims to 
a bounty for an agricultural education are equally imposing, 
science being alike beneficial to both—the one to preserve 
and prolong life, the other to nourish it and multiply its com¬ 
forts. The public mind should be excited to the tone which 
prevailed in ancient Sparta, of regarding the children of the 
republic as the property of the republic, as the materials of 
our temple of freedom, erected upon the principle of teach¬ 
ing the hands to work and the mind to think. In reference to 
this vital interest, the late De Witt Clinton indulged in a 
prophecy in his last message to the legislature of New-York, 
which the experience of the schools in Prussia and other Ger¬ 
man states has since fulfilled. He said, that “ by a proper 
system of education and correct modes of teaching, our chil¬ 
dren might become familiar with the physical sciences, bo¬ 
tany, mineralogy, the various classes of animals, chemistry, 
natural philosophy, astronomy, the fundamental principles 
of agriculture and political economy, and much of history 
and biography.” 
The endowment of agricultural schools and the circulation 
of agricultural journals is rendered the more necessary from 
a consideration of the peculiar habits and modes of thinking 
prevalent among our farmers. As a class of people they have 
little intercourse with each other; they do not preserve the 
result of their experiments in books, like mechanics and 
manufacturers; they have rarely held conventions to concen¬ 
trate into a focus the lights of the day, to be thence imparted 
through the press to the remotest ends of the republic; they 
entertain an unworthy prejudice towards the attainments of 
book farming; they profess to be too old to seek or to receive 
information upon the great business of their lives, and there¬ 
fore we must look to the means which shall enlighten the 
rising generation for any hope of future high attainments in 
agricultural knowledge. In designating the source of these 
unpropitious notions among our farmers, we shall perceive 
at once the pernicious influence of their reluctance to read 
agricultural journals; and as if they had designed to set at 
nought all the maxims of common prudence, we find them 
encouraging and sustaining nearly one thousand political pa¬ 
pers, whilst not more than twenty papers devoted to agri¬ 
culture are supported by a class whose numbers and impor¬ 
tance are in the inverse ratio of their distinctive journals.— 
The farmer is content to meet his neighbor at the court yard, 
at the muster, at the election, and occasionally at the fire¬ 
side in the winter, to converse about his farm and its pro¬ 
ducts, and sometimes about the reason of different modes of 
cultivation, but he will reject a newspaper devoted to agri¬ 
culture, which conveys to him the concentrated experience 
of all the intelligent and practical farmers who have lived in 
every country and in every age, and cannot be persuaded to 
realize that in persuing the pages of the N. Y. Cultivator, 
the Genesee Farmer, the Farmer’s Cabinet, of 1 enn., the 
Farmer’s Register of Va., the Buckeye Plougliboy, of O., 
and the Maine Farmer, the N. E. Farmer, the Farmer and 
Gardener of Balt., and the Franklin Farmer, he is convers¬ 
ing at his leisure with those in every age who have made 
farming both a science and a business. In view then of these 
facts, who can estimate the vast amount of every species of 
improvement in cultivation, the results of individual exer¬ 
tion for ages, that has been lost for the want of convenient 
methods of communication; or who would now attempt to 
calculate the addition that has been made to our stock of ag¬ 
ricultural knowledge and wealth by the publications which 
are now diffusing their light all over the country 1 
As an evidence of the deep necessity for the adoption of 
some stimulating measures in relation to our agricultural con¬ 
dition, we have only to advert to the crop which is annually 
produced in Kentucky, not exceeding upon an average 35 
bushels of corn, 12 of small grain, 500 lbs. of hemp and one 
ton of hay to the acre; and whilst the Atlantic States pre¬ 
sent the humiliating spectacle of importing hay and oats from 
Scotland, eggs from France, potatoes from Ireland and Ger¬ 
many, and bread stuffs from every country in Europe, Ken¬ 
tucky imports clover and timothy seed from Wheeling and 
Ohio, and seed Irish potatoes from Pittsburg. How few 
among us understand the amount which an acre perfectly cul¬ 
tivated, will produce. How few understand the secret of 
producing the greatest result without deterioration to the soil; 
the object being not merely to obtain the greatest crops for a 
few years, but the largest annual returns compatible with 
the increasing value of the soil. And how few now realize 
the startling fact that a farmer from Flanders would support 
his family by the cultivation of the fence corners now in 
weeds upon any of the large farms in Kentucky. 
These reflections, gentlemen, are submitted to you in the 
hope that we may all begin to learn something of our duty, 
and I shall be more than compensated if they shall have the 
auspicious effect of leading my brother farmers to think , and 
the legislative authority to act in relation to the great interest 
upon the prosperity of which every other depends; for the 
sentiment of Dean Swift is not less true now than when first 
published, “ that whoever could make two ears of corn or 
two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where 
only one grew before, would deserve better ol mankind and 
do more essential service to his country, than the whole race 
of politicians together.” 
Allow me then, in conclusion, to appeal to your pride of 
character, to your patriotic feelings and to your patriotic en¬ 
ergies, by addressing to you the language once applied to 
our profession by that ripe scholar and able financier, who 
has since won golden opinions for himself as President of the 
Bank of the United States. “ In this nation, agriculture is 
probal ly destined to attain its highest honors. The pure and 
splendid institutions of this people have embodied the br ghest 
dreams of those high spirits wdio, in other times and in other 
lands, have lamented or struggled against oppression; they 
have realized the fine conceptions which speculative men have 
imagined, which wise men have planned, or brave men 
vainly perished in attempting to establish.” * * “ The 
American farmer is the exclusive, absolute, uncontrolled 
proprietor of the soil. His tenure is not from government. 
The government derives its power from him. There is 
above him nothing but God and the laws; no hereditary au¬ 
thority usurping the distinctions of personal genius; no es¬ 
tablished church spreading its dark shadow between him and 
and heaven. But his character assumes a loftier interest by 
its influence over the public liberty. It may not be foretold 
to what dangers this country is destined, when its swelling 
population, its expanding territory, its daily complicating in¬ 
terests, shall awaken the latent passions of men, and reveal the 
vulnerable points of our institutions. But whenever these 
perils come, its most steadfast security, its unfailing reli¬ 
ance, will be on that column of landed proprietors—the men 
of the soil and of the country, standing aloof from the pas¬ 
sions which agitate denser communities, well educated, 
brave, and independent—the friends of the government with¬ 
out soliciting its favors, the advocates of the people without 
descending to flatter their passions; these men, rooted like 
their own forests, may yet interpose between the tactions of 
the country, to heal, to defend and to save.” 
On the Preservation of the Fruits of the Earth 
by Drying. 
[From Cliaptal’s Chemistry Applied to Agriculture.'] 
In all vegetable products, water exists in two different 
states, one part of it being found free, and the other in a state 
of true combination: the first portion, not being confined ex¬ 
cept by the covering of the vegetable, evaporates at the tem¬ 
perature of the atmosphere; the second is set free only at a 
temperature sufficiently high to decompose the substances 
containing it: the first, though foreign to the composition of 
the vegetable, enters into every part of it, dissolving some 
of its principles, serving as a vehicle for air and heat, and 
being converted by cold into ice; by these several properties 
it greatly facilitates decomposition: the second portion, from 
which no evil of the kind arises, is found combined and soli¬ 
dified in the plants, and its action is thus neutralized. Dry¬ 
ing, then, consists in depriving the product to be preserved 
of the water contained in it in a free state, by heat; and from 
what has been observed above, it follows, that too great a 
degree of heat must not be applied, as, inconsequence, the 
taste and the organization of the substance would be chang¬ 
ed by a commencement of the decomposition of its constitu¬ 
ent principles: the temperature should never be higher than 
from 35° to 4-5° of the centigrade. ( = from 95° to 113° Fah¬ 
renheit.) 
Drying can be performed either by the heat of the sun or 
in stove rooms. In the southern climates the heat of the sun 
is sufficiently powerful to dry the greater part of the fruits, 
and thus to preserve them unaltered: the drying is effected 
by exposing them to the rays of the sun upon hurdles or 
slates, where they will be protected from rain, dust, and in¬ 
jury from animals. Practice alone is sufficient to enable one 
to judge of the degree, to which each kind of fruit must be 
dried in order to its preservation. 
When the outer skin or rind of the fruit is of a kind to pre¬ 
vent the water from passing off' freely, incisions are made in 
