He would say to the farmers of New Hampshire, never use a grade bull. It is a shame that the agricultural society offers premiums for grade animals. It is a loss to the county and the state,. and unworthy of any men called upon to offer premiums. It is going back a hundred years. It is cheating ourselves out of a hundred years' experience of men who were as good, if not better, farmers than we are. The Cheshire county cattle are worth a cent a pound more for fattening purposes, than any other, simply because we use the pure blood instead of the grade bull."

Mr. C. S. George, of Barnstead, advocated encouragement to native stock (evidently for the sake of creating an interest, for Mr. George is a successful breeder of Short Horns). He said there was a vast difference between the New York Dutch and the Holstein. It was the New York Dutch, if any, that failed at butter making. He knew that the half-blood Holstein were excellent for butter. It was beyond question that the Jerseys were superior for butter. It is a question whether the Devons are superior. He urged giving more attention to native stock and less to pure blood. It is not the beauty of a cow that increases her good milking qualities. He did not care for beauty; it was milk and cream and butter that he was after. Beauty may be well enough, but generally it was the homeliest cow that gave the most and best milk. Give the good old native the same kind of feed, the same care, the same judgment in selection, and they will beat all your fancy blood stock. At the same expense the native will make more milk and butter, and are better for breeding. Disease does not take hold of natives as it does of your pure bloods. Pleuro-pneumonia was never known to break out among a herd of natives. He thought the Holstein the best breed of imported cattle. In breeding, never cross a big bull with a little cow; but always a big cow with a small bull. He thought a great deal of grade cattle.

Mr. Buffum spoke again, defending the pure bloods, and although allowing that sometimes in individual cases the native might be about as good for milk, he claimed that there was no certainty that you could breed a good cow from the native, while with the pure blood every calf was of better blood than its mother, and consequently every year the value of the stock was increasing. Especially is this true in the stock noted for its milking strains, like the Princess.

Holstein Heifer, OPPERDOES 3d, bred by Winthrop W. Chenery, Belmont, Mass.

LAND DRAINAGE.

At the request of the Chairman of the Board, Joseph B. Walker, Esq., of Concord, an educated and public spirited farmer, prepared a paper on the important subject of Drainage which he has read at many of the farmers' meetings during the winter. It has everywhere been received with great favor, and is justly considered one of the most valuable contributions to our Report.

UNDERDRAINING.

[Address by Joseph B. Walker, Esq., of Concord.]

Sir Walter Scott used to say that "There was nothing more conducive to a man's health than a walk of a mile before breakfast, particularly if over his own land." Confident that there is truth in this remark of the great novelist, I invite you to a stroll this morning over the bogs and marshes and drenched meadows of our own state, hoping that repeated mirings and successive leapings of sluggish streams may not only afford wholesome exercise, but convert you all to a belief in thorough drainage.

The census returns of the year 1870 are not particularly flattering to our New Hampshire agriculture. One hundred and seventy-seven towns have now a less population than they had ten years ago, and these are all, or nearly all, farming towns. The war called away many of their most vigorous sons and only a part of them have returned. The superior attractiveness, real or fancied, of other pursuits have caused the removal of some, while the cheap, rich lands of the west have induced the emigration of others still. Now, in many sections, farming languishes. Buildings and fields show signs of neglect. Labor, scarce and dear, is not unfrequently performed in great part by old men and boys. It seems at first glance as though the great leading interest of the state was declining and passing under a cloud.

But it is unmanly to take counsel of our fears or to yield to temporary despondency. While some localities may have diminished their population, others have increased theirs. People are gathering more than formerly at important centres, and along the lines of railways, and many of our towns show an important increase during the last decade. Much, indeed, of the loss, at which we sigh and shrug our shoulders, is more apparent than real a simple movement of population from one locality to another more inviting.

Yes, it is a mistake to despond of our husbandry. Its future will be just what the farmers of New Hampshire resolve to make it. Many vicious practices and erroneous notions, that have long prevailed to our hurt, will doubtless die, and ought to die, but from their ashes, Phoenix-like, will arise others to gladden our fields and rejoice our hearts. Our agriculture is just now in a transition state, from a lower to a higher plane, and at the very point of its passage at which it needs the aid of clear heads, willing arms and energetic souls to lift it into regeneration and a prosperity commensurate with its importance. To secure this result we must farm better than we have been wont to do. We must cultivate better our tillage lands; we must improve our pastures; we must devote more care to our herds, and learn to appreciate the difference between a mongrel and a thoroughbred animal; we must reclaim and drain our wet lands and make every acre, whether water, land, or mountain crag, produce something.

I am aware that drainage has had sturdy opponents, as well as earnest advocates. There is a kind of conservatism in the world which inclines men to take things as they are and to keep them so. You remember, perhaps, the deprecatory remark of Aunt Dorothy to her niece, reported to us by Mrs. Charles in her "Draytons and Davenants," when a few years before the protectorate, Oliver Cromwell called at her brother's house in the fen country, where they had often talked upon this very subject. "I can't think why they wont let the fens alone. They did very well for our fathers as they were, and they were better men than we see now-a-days; and if the Almighty made the fens wet I suppose he meant them to be wet." With profoundest reverence for the opinions of Aunt Dorothy, we are constrained to differ from her on this point, and conscientiously believe He did not mean them to be forever wet.

The wet lands of this state are of much greater extent than is generally supposed, and I hazard little, I think, in saying that