State Convention—Grass is King. 
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on indiscriminate warfare upon all forms of animal and vegetable 
existence within reach, and defeat the beneficent provisions of the 
Creator, by diminishing the resources of individuals, communities, 
and nations for the development of human happiness and pub¬ 
lic wealth, without, as the result of these destructive changes, in¬ 
viting, invoking, and eliciting natural, legitimate, and merited pen¬ 
alties in sterility of soil, or that physical degradation, decay, and 
decrepitude, which we find in millions of square miles in the Old 
World, where a terrible blight has smitten what were once the 
fairest and most fertile provinces of Imperial Rome, including 
Greece, Alpine Europe, Northern Africa, Asia Minor, and nearly 
the entire basin of the Mediterranean—countries, which, for many 
centuries, from Egyptian times down during Grecian and Persian 
ascendency, Roman supremacy, Byzantine glory, and early Ot¬ 
toman or Turkish magnificence, were fertile and populous, main¬ 
taining dense populations in luxury, supplying abundant suste¬ 
nance for vast armies, without commissariats or sutlers, moving to 
and fro through lands that are now unproductive, desolate, and al¬ 
most worthless; and transformed from a goodly heritage into a 
realm of sterility, desolation, and poverty. 
Mr. Dwight: I thought as I had been down in the State of New 
York, to one of the best dairy-regions in the State, this winter, I 
might say something which would be of interest. I was in the 
county of Oneida for six weeks, and nearly all the stock kept in 
that portion of the State are cows. I didn’t see but one or two 
small flocks of sheep, and but very few hogs. They don't raise fast 
horses, and they don’t confine themselves exclusively to dairying. 
They raise a great many hops. One gentleman sold $‘27,000 worth 
off from sixty acres. Neither do they pasture their land as close as 
we do. I walked over many fields, and you would sink as far as 
your ankle in the grass. They would manure the land until it 
was in such a state of fertility that it would produce enormous 
crops of grass. This is on a branch of the Mohawk. They raise 
great crops of potatoes, and great crops of fruit, so that their riches 
don’t proceed from the dairy alone, but principally from the grass 
and manure. I believe the more grass the more manure you have, 
and the more manure the more grass. They feed well. One gen- 
