network, diffusing fertility and beauty around. The Spaniards on their arrival in Mexico were astonished at the perfection to which horticulture was carried through the same means. The feudal eras of Europe were active periods of the canal system of irrigation— an age in which were reared the Gothic Cathedrals and the beautiful Abbeys-an age in which intellectual culture in its highest forms were blessings attendant only on the few. Learned men of the present age claim to have the evidence that of the arts, the ancients knew more about the manufacture of glass than we do. Telescopes, microscopes, and opera glasses, are said to have been used thousands of years before the time of Galileo. The ancients were our superiors in the manufacture of metals. According to some they had the steamboat and the canal, and could move building stones of three thousand tons each. They had iron railroads. They had, in some form, the balloon and the telegraph, the stereoscope and the mowing-machine. In the printing-press, the great discovery of modern times, we see hope for a higher and more enduring civilization than in the waves of the past.

An oriental ambassador, on visiting our country, made the sage remark that this was a young country, but a very old people. Had he been permitted to have explored farther and read the record of science aright, he might have modified his opinion in regard to the age of this Western Hemisphere-the "New World"-where stands individual specimens of growing vegetables where they have stood in security since their growth commenced, seven thousand years ago; and where the fossil remains of man prove him to have been an inhabitant of these vast plains prior to the last great change in the polarity of the earth. The remark that we are a very old people, should also be modified, the opinion having been based on an exhibition of our wondrous activity and energy in business, and our mechanical tact. Our family genealogy is nothing to boast of. Derived from a composite stock, we are a concrete people, and can look back on a dark wave of comparative barbarism from whence we have just emerged. England, our great prototype, has excelled in commerce and manufactures, rather than in agriculture. She has been an instance where a dense population has existed, measurably, on lands that have not afforded them sustenance. The talent of her people has not heretofore gone out in the direction of supplying the nation's bread from her own soil; else how could she now say that her agricultural products

have been doubled in the last thirty years? Circumstances effect more in the formation of character in the individual or the nation, than innate greatness or goodness.

Other nations affect to sneer at our conceit in having a certain "destiny" to work out on this continent. We certainly shall work it out, and it will be a noble destiny, unless we misapply the stupendous power that we already have accumulated. The men who settled these shores were made suitable for the task. Their immediate descendants wielded with tremendous physical force their rude implements. As population increased, cities were built, commerce, traffic, the mechanic arts, &c., divided the attention of the people, taking a constantly increasing proportion from the primary occupation-agriculture; thus creating a constant demand for increased production through improved facilities. For a long time the almost entire absence of internal trade, through the difficulties of transit, left each rural district dependent on its rude mechanics for articles of prime necessity. It is within our recollection that the country blacksmith made the farmer's plow, his hay and manure forks, &c. The very vastness of the country contributed to delay the time when agricultural operations should be conducted with thoroughness. New lands, and more attractive, enticed men westward from our rugged shore, dispersing our increased population over vast areas, and thus saving the first settled provinces from feeling anything akin to the discomforts of a crowded population. Improvements for inter-communication, to keep pace with the progress of the country in other respects, were entered upon with vigor, under the lead of the master minds of the age. The prosecution of these public works encouraged the immigration of vast numbers of laborers from the Eastern Continent. These thoroughfares when opened served as an additional escape-valve to the population of the Eastern States, and at the same time to bring to us the agricultural products of the West cheaper than we had learned to produce them at home.

This cursory view brings us down to a day not twenty years removed from the present. Agriculture had, through all that time, if not through the force, certainly through the lead of circumstances, been conducted on an exhaustive plan. The farms that had been kept at their original fertility, or been raised above it, were the exceptions-few and far between. Minds, observant and deep, were not wanting to warn the people against a course so destruc

tive. Washington, Jefferson, the Adamses, Quincy, Buel, Clay, Webster, and other worthies, by precept and practice labored to stay the current running to swift destruction, but in vain. The temptation of present gain could not be withstood by those who knew better; but the masses knew no better way. We give man the credit of acting, in the main, in accordance with his highest light. The men who have cleared farms in Maine, reared families, exhausted their acres, sold their effects and " moved to Ohio," exhausted a farm there, again "pulled up stakes" and "gone out West," are not to be blamed for any mischief they may have done by over-cropping the lands they have occupied. They have acted their part as pioneers, and the world had need of them in that capacity.

It is far easier to find fault with the men who have cleared away the forests for us, and done battle with savages and wild beasts, than it is to so regulate our own actions and perform our labors with wisdom, that future generations may see no good cause to complain of us.

We in the present, have committed to us a goodly heritage, and if we fail to transmit it to our successors with improvements, we shall live in vain. In order to thus transmit it, we must look well to its present condition. Such has been the decline in agricultural products in all the older States, through the exhaustion of the soil, that an immediate and radical change in our husbandry is demanded. The last twenty years, we may hope, have witnessed the lowest ebb of the tide in this regard. Science has stepped in to relieve husbandry somewhat of its former monotony; and our agricultural literature from thousands of earnest men, has, through associated labors, and the mighty printing-press, been so liberally and generally diffused, that the tide may already have been turned in the right direction.

In this transition state, with comparatively little new lands to be added to our domain, and much to be renovated, the future success of the nation should be made dependent on the combined wisdom and talent of all, under the most favorable circumstances of peace and prosperity. But with a clouded horizon we must lean a little more on hope. The darkest political obscuration cannot obliterate physical facts. Here the beneficent hand of Nature, so divinely wise in all the vast planning, has been lavish of her gifts. We see here laid out a vast continent, accessible in every border

and boundary, interwoven with rivers, lakes and mountains, a climate diversified and harmoniously adapted to every want which the most extravagant imagination could desire. With a reasonable appreciation of so many and so rich blessings, the task would seem easy to perpetuate here a republic, where future generations could not fail to be recognized powerful among the nations of the earth. In the last few years, the most notable change in our husbandry, has been in the increased substitution of new and improved machinery for human labor. This has been only the natural result of the pre-existing conditions in society, as we have attempted to show. Circumstances had made our people self-reliant, and they had accumulated a surpassing amount of latent thought and inventive ability.

It now becomes an interesting question, What are the conditions of continued progress and prosperity? On this point, the United States' Commissioner of Agriculture says: "1st, Peace; 2d, a continued and increasing demand for agricultural products, both at home and abroad; 3d, an increased respect for labor; 4th, a more thorough knowledge and practice of agriculture as an art and science; 5th, a more thorough education of our farmers in the physical sciences, in political economy, in taste, and general reading."

A state of war reduces the productive industry of a country, by the transfer of labor. But in our present case there are compensating circumstances of considerable moment, in the increased skill and energy taking the place of the old system, the inflow of agricultural labor from Europe, and the more extensive use of laborsaving machines.

It will take considerable time to eradicate the habit that has been formed in cultivating a primitive soil. But with a teachable disposition the wrong may be unlearned, and much of the right learned in valuable lessons now offered by the older nations. If China and Japan were to adopt our methods of tillage, famine would soon reduce their population by hundreds of millions. But their spade labor would not now do for us, neither would our mowers, reapers, or a steam-plow, do for them, on their terraced hills. But in their habit of prudently saving and applying manure, minute culture, rotation of crops, and irrigation wherever possible, we might take them for our teachers with advantage.

One of the most efficient means to rapid improvement in agriculture in modern times, as well as to the general progress of the

world in civilization, has been the grand series of international exhibitions, inaugurated in 1851. If any parties in these exhibitions were surprised in meeting facts that had not been disclosed through the ordinary road of commerce, they were the older nations, at the utilitarian inventions of these States.

We have hinted at the contributions of science to modern husbandry. The inductive philosophy of Lord Bacon, two hundred years ago, taught man to experiment, to question, and test nature as she is presented in soils, gases and phenomena a philosophy, positive, progressive and eternal. From that time, numerous experiments were made in soils to ascertain the causes of fertility, and through them the way was prepared for much subsequent scientific résearch. At the beginning of the present century, Sir Humphrey Davy established agricultural chemistry as a department of science. He developed the principle, that the productions of the soil derive their component elements from the surrounding atmosphere, or from the soil. He showed that in the process of vegetation, there was a perpetual assimilation of various substances to the organs of plants, through the exertions of their life powers, and their chemical affinities, aided by light, heat and moisture. He analyzed soils and plants, and showed what properties and conditions would best furnish the elements needed in their cultivation. These ideas reduced to practice by some of the leading landholders of England, soon produced a marked effect on the agriculture of the kingdom, and has turned a fourth part of the area of England from an unproductive wild into a garden.

In this connection, Sir H. Davy remarked, that "Nothing is impossible to labor aided by science." It is such expressions indulged in by profound thinkers, and echoed by the enthusiastic, (and this hall has contributed its quota of glib talk,) that has magnified the subject of agricultural chemistry to unreal and fantastic proportions, and exposed the whole subject matter fairly to the charge of "science run mad." We have seen pretenders. "making a very good living," canvassing our State, lecturing on Agricultural Chemistry, (and any other topic that the locality was specially hungry for,) taking from enterprising farmers a specimen of soil with a fee of five dollars in advance, under the promise of a full and reliable analysis for that sum. Our impression is, that all who have so invested for minute doses of science, have found both their dirt and money clean gone, with never a show of an equivalent.