PROCEEDINGS #36- OF THE FIFTH ANNUAL SESSION UC-NRLF OF THE 71 EMI L AT PHILADELPHIA, PA., September 12th, 13th and 14th, 1876. THE TEST OF NATIONAL WELFARE is THE INTELLIGENCE AND PROSPERITY OF THE FARMER." -GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS CHICAGO, PRAIRIE FARMER COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1877. GIFT ©F PROCEEDINGS Oi- THE FIFTH ANNUAL SESSION OF THUS AT PHILADELPHIA, PA., September 12th, 13th and 14th, 1876. "THE TEST OF NATIONAL WELFARE is THE INTELLIGENCE AND PROSPERITY OP THE FAKMER. " — GEOROE WILLIAM CURTIS. CHICAGO, PRAIRIE FARMER COMPANY, PRINTERS, 1877. s&a Gift OFFICERS 1876-7. PRESIDENT. WILL.ABD C. FLAGG, MORO, ILLINOIS. VICE-PRESIDENTS- ALABAMA ARIZONA ARKANSAS.... CALIFOkNIA. COLORADO... CONN DAKOTA DELAWARE... DIST. COL.... FLORIDA... GEORGIA... IDAHO ILLINOIS INDIANA INDIAN TER.. IOWA KANSAS , KENTUCKY... LOUISIANA... MAINE MARYLAND.. . MASS MICHIGAN MINNESOTA . . . . J. T. TICHENOR Auburn. ..WARREN FOOTE. ...St. Thomas. ..S. COCKRLLL Little Rock. ..J. M. HAMILTON. . . .Gueuoc. ..N. C. MEEKER Greeley. . .T. S. GOLD West Cornwall. .E.B. CREW Lodi. ..BDW. TATNALL.... Wilmington. . J. R. DODGE Washington. ..B. F. WARDLAW.... Madison. . .THOS. P. JANES Atlanta. ..J.W.BENNETT Boise City- ..M.B.LLOYD .J. Q.A. NEWSOM. .W.P. ROSS... ..A.S.WELCH.... ..ALFRED GRAY. ..W.J.DAVIE.... .&.B.IRION ..S. L. GOOD ALE ..W.B. SANDS.... ..L. STOCKBRIDGE. ..Amherst. . T. C. ABBOT Lansing. ..JOHN H. STEVENS. Minneapoli ..Orion. ..Elizabethtown. . .Muskogee. . . Ames. .. Topeka. ..Frankf >rt. ..Marksville. ...Saco. ..Btltimore. MISSISSIPPI . . . . J. O. WHARTON MISSOURI J. S. MARMADUKE. . MONTANA BRIGHAM REED NEBRASKA J. S. MORTON NEVADA L. R. BK AD LEY N. HAMPSHIRE. DUDLEY J. CHASE... NEW JERSEY... .GEO. H. COOK N EW MEXICO. . . THOS. J. BUEL NEW YORK X. A.W1LLAKD.. . N. CAROLINA.. .KEMP P. BATTLES... OHIO JOHN H. KLIPPART. OBEGON ANDREW J. DUFPR. PENN A. L. KENNEDY RHODE ISLAND..GEO. E. WARING, JR, S. CAROLINA. . . .R. C, F. BAKER TENNESSEE THOS. CL AIRBORNE, TEXAS WM. WATSON UTAH J.E.JOHNSON VERMONT E. D. MASON VIRGINIA W.P. BURWELL WASHINGTON . .PHILIP RITZ W.VIBGINIA....THOS.MASLIN WISCONSIN W. W. FIE LD WYOMING J. A. CAMPBELL ..Terry . ..St.Loui8.| .Bozeman. .Nebraska] .Cars on Ci .Claremonr .N. Bruas .Mesilla. .Llttlrt Fs .Raleigh. .Columbus .Portland. .Philadelpl .Newport. .Nashville, j .Brenham. .St. George .Richmond. .Richmoi . Walla Wi .Mooreflel .Madison. .Cheyenne. I SECRETARY. HORACE J. SMITH, PHI, ADELPHIA, PA. TREASURER. EZRA WHITMAN, BALTIMORE, MD. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. W. C. FLAGG, HORACE J. SMITH. EZRA WHITMAN. STANDING COMMITTEES, Etc. For the purpose of acting as Standing Committees, and as President, Vice President and Secretary of Sections or Departments, whenever necessary, the following gentlemen are requested to serve during the coming year and at the next meeting. These committees will please bring before the Congress any matter that they may deem important, and to them will be referred such business as the Congress may deem appropriate. AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. PROF. L^JVI STOCKBRIDGE, Amherst, Mass., PROF. S. W. JOHNSON, New Haven, Conn., PROF. B. W. HILGARD, Berkeley, Cal. AGRICULTURAL METEOROLOGY. PROP. J. B. TURNER, Jacksonville, II'., CAPT. GARRICK MALLERY. Washington, D. C., PROF, JOHN H. TICB, St. LouiP, Mo. AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. R. DOD GE, Washington, D. C.. T. P. JANES, Atlanta. Ga,, ALFRED GRAY, Topeka, Kansas AGRICULTURAL ENTOMOLOGY. PROF. C. V. RILEY, St. Louis Mo., PROF. CYRUS THOMAS, Carbondale, 111. A. S. PACKARD, Salem. Mas-. FIELD CULTURE. PROF. I. P. ROBERTS, Ithaca, N. Y., PROP. JOHN HAMILTON, Agricultural College, Pa,, PROF. N. S. TOWNSHEND, Columbus, Ohio. FORESTRY. BURNET LANDRETH, Philadelphia. Pa., DE. JOHN A. WARDER, Cincinnati, O., PROP. H. H. McAFEB, Freeport, III. DOMESTIC ANIMALS. LEWIS F. ALLBN, Buffalo, N. Y., COL. THUS. CLAIRBORNE, Nashville, Tenn., J. H. PICKRELL, Harristown, 111. RURAL ECONOMY AND LEGISLATION. HON. W. W. FIELD, Mad'son, Wis., COL. EDWARD DANIELS, Accotink, Va., DR. A. L. KENNEDY, Philadelph a, PA. AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. PRE8. J. T. TICK ENOR, Auburn, Ala., PRES A. S.WELCH, Ames, la., PRE8.T. C. ABBOT, Lansing, Mich. SPECIAL COMMITTEE. UNIFORMITY OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. DR. A. L. KENNEDY, Philadelphia, Pa., A. G. HUMPHREYS, Galesburg, 111., MOSES HUMPH >EY, Concord, N H.. ^ROF. J. T. TICHENOK, Auburn, Ala., -•R-IF. G. W. JONES, Des Moioes, Iowa, MOSES CLARK, Newa k, N. J., N. C. MEEKER, Greel<-y, Colorado, W. J. DAV1B, Frankfort, Ky., PROF. I. M. ROBERTS, Itha-a, N. Y. W. D. SANDS, Baltimore, Md.t T. S. GOLF), West Cornwall, Conn., LEVI STOCKBRIDGE, Amh rst, Mass., J. A. WARDER, Cincinnati, Ohio, DR. J. E. 8NODGKASS, Washington, D. C. W. ELLIOTT, Farmington, Minn., A. J. DUFtTR, Portland, Oregon, B. A. MARTIN, Dahlonega, Georg'a, C. V. RILTCY, St. Louie, Mo., J.B KILLEBREW, Nashville, Tenn., W. W. FIELD, Madison, Wis. Members who paid their dues for the year at Philadelphia. LEWIS F. ALLEN, Buffalo, N. Y., THOMAS CLAIRBORNE, Nashville, Tent)., W. J. DAVIB, Frankfort, Kentucky, A. B. DAVIS, Brookville, Maryland, ANDRE W J. DUFUR, Portland, Oregon, H. M.ENGLE, Marietta, Pennsylvania, W. C. FLAGG, Moro, Illinois, JOHN H. GARDINER, Rio Vista, California, A. J. GRAVES, Amps, I jwa, B. L. F. HARDC ASTLE, Eiston, Maryland, JOSEPH HARRIS, Rochester, New York, A. G HUMPHREY, Galesburg, Illinois, THOS. P. JANES, Atlanta, Georgia, A. L. KENNEDY, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ISRAEL L. LANDIS, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, M. B. LLOYD, Orion, Illinois, H. H. McAFBB. Freeport, Illinois, B. A. MARTI*; Daklonega, Georgia, GBO. A. MARTIN, Buffalo, New York, GEO. W. MINIKR, Minier, Illinois, GEO. B. MORROW, Champa'gn, Illinois, C. V. RILBY, Sr,. L >ms, Miseouri, I. P. RO HERTS, Ithaca, New York, T. T. SMITH, St. Paul, Minnesota, J. E. 8NODGRASS, Washington, D. C., J. T. TICHENOK, Auburn, Alabama, *r. S. TOWNSHEND, Columbus, Ohio, L. L. WATERS, Princess Anne, Maryland, A. S. W ELCH, Am°s, Iowa, B. WHITMAN, Baltimore, Maryland. X. A. WILL \KD, Little Falls, New York, L.|,B. WILLIAMS, Montrose, Iowa. 544 169 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF NATIONAL AGRI- CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. By W. C. FLAGG. The earliest attempts at forming an Agricult- ural Organization, really national in its scope, I think, was the result of the efforts of Solon Robinson, afterwards, well known as the agri- cultural editor of the New York Tribune. The meeting was held at Washington, in Sept. 1841' and accounts of that and subsequent meetings, may be found in the old Albany Cultivator, now the Country Gentleman, in the Union Agricult- urist, now THE PRAIRIE FARMER, and probably in other papers. It met again in December, and then in the following year at Washington, and then seems to have become extinct. This or- ganization was known as the Agricultural So- ciety of The United States. James M. Garnett, of Virginia, was its President. John S. Skinm-r, ii s Corresponding Secretary, John F. Callan, its Recording Secretary, and Edward Dyer, its Treasurer at the December election, and the same with the substitution of Elisha Whittlesey for John S. Skinner, were chosen the following May. The United States Agricultural Society was organized in June 1852, by 152 delegates from 23 states and territories. This society continued in existence until the war. It held several large fairs and field trials, and through meetings and publications, did much to promote the art of ag- riculture. Marshall P. Wilder, Ben. F. French, Ben. Perley Poore, and others, appear among its prominent members. The National Agricultural Congress- The National Agricultural Congress, an ac- count of whose fifth annual meeting is here- with given, may be traced to the year 1870, when " at the suggestion and under the auspices of the Cotton States Agricultural and Mechanical Association, the Agusta Board of Trade, and the Municipal Government of Augusta," dele- gates from 11 states and the District of Colum- bia, convened at Augusta, Georgia, and organ- ized "The Agricultural Congress," whose ob- jects were declared to be " the advancement of Agriculture, and the Arts of Husbandry." Hon. H. V. Johnson, of Georgia, was chosen Presi- dent. Gen. A. R. Wright, Corresponding Secre- tary, L. Comington, Secretary, and J. J. Cohen, Treasurer, all of Georgia, with a vice president for each of the eleven states represented, and numerous standing committees on cotton, wheat, corn, labor and immigration, entomolo- gy, &c., &c. No formal addresses or business, beyond organization, appear to have been transacted, and the congress adjourned to com- plete its organization &c., at Selma, Alabama, in December 1871. Meanwhile, under the auspices of the " Ten- nessee Agricultural and Mechanic Association," a similar gathering " composed of delegates from 11 states, representing more that 40 differ- ent Agricultural Societies and Associations." was held at Nashville, Oct. 3d-5th, 1871. This body organized the " National Agricultural As- sociation." The preamble recites as reasons for organizing : " To extend the usefulness of the various associations and societies, organized for the purpose of promoting the interests of agri- culture in the United States, and in order to create unity and harmony, as well as concert of action, in reference to those measures calculat- ed to increase the efficiency of this, the most im- portant of our national pursuits; and especially secure the proper consideration of questions, pertaining to the industrial and commercial in- terest?, of this large and productive class of our people." F. Julius Le Moyne, of Pennsylvania, was chosen President, with a Vice-President from each of ten states, and J. B. Killebrew, as Secretary, and F. H. French as Treasurer. Both of the latter were from Tennessee. The meeting was spent in organizing, and adjourned to meet at St. Louis, in May, 1873, having first appointed a committee to attend the meeting at Slema, and to propose a consolidation of the two or- ganizations. In October the Agricultural Congress met at Selma. The attendance was not so large as at the previous meeting. R. J. Spurr, of Kentucky, was elected President, and Charles W. Greene, of Tennessee, Secretary. The proposition for a union of the two organizations was favorably received and the Congress adjourned to meet at St. Louis. May 27, 1872, the two societies met at St. Louis and continued in session four days. The two or- ganizations were made one under the name of the "National Agricultural Congress." Some 17 states were represented. Addresses, some of them of great interest, were delivered by Maj. T. W. Woodward, on the Influence of Forests on Rainfall ; by Com. M. F. Maury, on Science— Its Applicability to Agriculture; by Prof. J. B. Turner, on Education of American Farmers ; by H. N. McAllister, on the proper Spheres, Objects and Duties of Agricultural Colleges in the Uni- ted States, &c. John P. Reynolds, of Illinois, was elected President. Vice Presidents were chosen from 40 states and territories. Charles W. Greene, of Tennessee, was made Secretary, and Lee R. Shyrock, of Missouri, Treasurer. The second meeting of the National Agricult- ural Congress, or the fourth counting from the original meeting, was held at Indianapolis, May 26-30, 1873. No set addresses were made. Twenty or more states and territories were represented. The Congress was welcomed by Gov. Hendricks and the Mayor of the city. The topics of Trans- portation, Agricultural Colleges, &c., were dis- cussed and made the subjects of formal reports and resolutions. Gen. Wm. H. Jackson, of Ten- nessee, was elected President, and Charles W. Greene, then of Tennessee, but subsequently of Illinois, and now of Indiana, was re-elected Sec- retary. The third, or fifth meeting was held at Atlanta, Georgia, May 13-15, 1874. Some ten states were represented. Addresses were made, or papers forwarded, by the President ; by J. R. Dodge, of the Department of Agriculture ; by Pres. A. D. White, of Cornell University ; by J. B. Killebrew, of the Tennessee Board of Agriculture ; by W. C. Flagg, of Illinois ; John A. Warder, of Ohio, and others. President Jackson was re-elected President, and George E. Morrow, of Wisconsin, Secretary. The fourth, or sixth, session was held at Cin- cinnati, Sept. 22-24, 1875. Only five or six states were represented and the members were mostly new. Addresses were delivered by J. B. Kille- brew, of Tennessee, Dr. J. M. Gregory and W. C. Flagg, of Illinois, and papers were submitted by Col. Edward Daniels, of Virginia, and others. W. C. Flagg, of Illinois, was elected President, and George E. Morrow, re-elected Secretary. This brings us to the date of the meeting whose proceedings are given herewith, which is the fifth of the consolidated societies or the seventh dating from the Augusta meeting. The Augusta meeting's proceedings were pub- lished in a pamphlet of 21 pages ; those of the Nashville meeting in a pamphlet of 26 pages ; those of the St. Louis meeting in a pamphlet of 84 pages ; those of the Indianapolis meeting in the Farmers' Advocate, of Jackson, Tenn.; those of the Atlanta meeting in the Rural Sun, of Nashville, Tenn.; and those of the Cincinnati meeting, in the Cincinnati dailies of that date. PROCEEDINGS. JUDGES' HALL, INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION Q BOUNDS, PHILADELPHIA, September 12th, 1876. The National Agricultural Congress was called to order by the President at 3 P. M., and was opened with prayer by the Rev. G. W. Minier, of Illinois. The order of business proposed by the Ex- ecutive Committee was read by the Secretary and approved by the Congress. Addresses of Welcome. Dr. Alfred L. Kennedy, President of the Polytechnic College of Pennsylvania, then addressed the Congress as follows: Mr. President and Gentlemen of the National Agricultural Congress:— It would have been a source of great gratification to us all, had the President of our old Agricultural Society greeted you to-day. But he is absent by reason of sick- ness and the duty has devolved on myself:— an humble member. I reed hardly assure you that the duty is a pleasing one. Would that 1 were able to do it justice ! In this year of American jubilee, the present and the past embrace each other. The old an the new kiss one another. On this spot, conse- crated to the brotherhood of nations and the re- union of the American people, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, now in its eighty-second year, welcomes the National Ag- ricultural Congress, just four years old. The two centuries meet. They meet and show how similar were the aims of our fathers to those which animate us. Tho Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agri- culture was organized when Philadelphia was the Federal Capital. The founders of the society apprehended na restriction to the field of its op- erations. These were to be as wide-spread as the Union. It was, therefore, national in its objects and its membership embraced the leading agri- culturists of the new Union, who came hither to the seat of government. Did time permit, it would be a filial duty to trace the history of the society, learn how, having created and defended a nation, our fathers' next care was to promote that industry upon which our national prosperi- ty essentially depends. The removal of the capital to the District of Columbia, lost to the society her national char- acter. From her, numbers who learned within her halls the value of organization, have gone to the several states ; have built up there state and county societies, and she stands to-day, hemmed In it may be, but hemmed in by her own children who have settled round her. Recognizing your objects and those of our founders as almost identical, we hail your pres- ence and anticipate its results with profound gratification. For agriculture greatly needs to be promoted, and as a means to its promotion, to be better appreciated. To secure this wished-for consummation a national agricultural associa- tion is the most effective. Let us look a little at the estimate placed on our art. "Agriculture is the noblest employment of man." Our children write th*s truth in their school exercises, and the politician who solicits our votes shouts it trom the stump. But is it generally believed? If it were, if it were, I say, regarded as true that the practice of the art of the farmer is ennobling, then the intelligent and benevolent gentlemen who direct our reformatories would feel them- selves constrained to provide that labor for their inmates. But even in Philadelphia— I say it with shame of the city of my birth— in our House of Refuge— our house of reformation for juvenile off enders— they are employed in mechanical pur- suits adapted rather to a state penitentiary, in- stead of being put at the reformatory labor of the field. We welcome you gentlemen because we hope that you will enjoin upon the directors of the reformatories of the country the wisdom and propriety of so locating those institutions that agriculture may be utilized as a means of reform. When the London "Punch" delineates the typ- ical American— and Mr. Punch is a pretty correct delineator of sovereigns— he represents him as tall, lean and lank. Now, to correct these physical defects in the genus homo is of course an easy task to that vo- cation which has transformed the original wild stock of the bovine race into the beautiful sym- metry of the Devons and Durhams. But the typical American is not only too "wiry." He is too nervous and too impulsive. Can rural pursuits cure him? Most assuredly. The feverish life of cities, relieved only by a feverish rush to a fashionable watering place after his wife and daughters, entail bodily ills and mental woes upon him. He needs salubrious air much. The sweet serenity of rural scenes more. Sound minds in sound bodies must constitute the foundation of the American race, if it is to maintain its proud claim to be the "coming race," and to this end more of our business men and our men of wealth must live on farms. The railroads have given us quick transit. When Richard Peters, a former president of our society, whose farm lay just beyond Agricultural Hal), had crossed Market street bridge on his drive home, he was longer in reaching it than you, Mr. President, would be now, starting from the bridge by the cars of the Pennsylvania rail- road in reaching Bryn Mawr or Rosemont or Pooli or farming districts miles away. By the Reading railroad, a student of the college with which I am connected came daily during the last term, sixty miles to lectures, returning in the afternoon. The journey of 120 miles didn't hurt him. He led his class. Why do not business men more generally avail themselves of these facilities? For two reasons. 1. They dojnot appre- ciate the advantages of a country life to them- selves and their posterity. 2. The relation which they establish between themselves and their tenant farmers is not what it should be. It is known as "farming on shares," andisprofesedly arranged upon the principle of co-operative in- dustry, which in agriculture, as everywhere else, is based upon the fact of human fraternity. But that principle may be abused, and as applied in our present system of tenant farming, it is too frequently abused. We claim too much of our tenant farmer when we claim an equal share of everything he produces. We are like that school of political philosophers who would put a tariff on everything imported, instead of upon half a dozen specified articles of import. The nation suffers because it heeds these foolish philoso- phers, and we suffer from our foolish farm leases. We welcome you gentlemen, because we believe that a National Agricultural Congress can effect a reform in the terms of these contracts. Hither to these beautiful grounds the Ameri- can people come, from the North and the South, to shake hands "all round," and thank God that negro slavery— that one accursed thing which threatened to divide our nation— has gone for- ever. But with it went the class of planters, who, although they advocated a system of social disposition, were at Washington the stern and eloquent champions of political liberty, and con- stituted the great agricultural equipoise in our national councils. Unfortunately— taking ad- vantage of our conflict— British capitalists— to say nothing of their government— seized the op- portunity to cripple and destroy our merchant marine. Commerce lost enormously in property. She lost also the prestige which ever on a repub- lic like ours rightly belongs to her. The field was thus left open to the third and remaining branch of industry, manufactures, and well did her teeming millions seek to improve the occa- sion. By combinations which covered the land, they controlled national legislation. With what result let the prostrate energies of a great peo- ple attest. We welcome you gentlemen, because we hope through you to see now, with " Liberty throughout the land," the agricultural equipoise at least in some degree restored in our national councils. We need— how greatly we need— an active, refined body of farmers, wielding an in- fluence that shall make itself felt in the Capitol and at the White House. The reconstruction of the nation will not be complete until agriculture and commerce shall be restored to an equal place and influence with their twin sister, manufact- ures, when the Union will march forward in tri- une harmony. As a means to this great end we must win to our art the retired capitalist, the man of active business, and him of elegant leis- ure, winning them by presenting the peculiar charm of our vocation. A vocation which sur- rounds us with the beautiful in nature, and con- tinually invites us to the interpretation of her mysteries. A vocation in which we seek to con- trol the refined chemistry of the gases, to draw them from the atmosphere, and to transform them into new combinations for human susten- ance. A vocation in which we seek to control the more subtle agencies of vitality and so to di- rect the forces of animal and vegetable life that they may produce "some 40, some 60, some IOC fold." We seek to deal with the undecomposa- ble elements of matter, to compound them into sources of fertility and cover the earth with verdure. We find in our work, day by day, new proofs of a beneficient Providence and of our dependence on His bounty. " Paul may plant, and Apolles water, but God giveth the increase." And now, gentlemen of the National Agricult- ural Congress, I extend to your president the right hard of agricultural fellowship and again welcome you to Philadelphia. Captain Burnet Landreth, Chief of the Bureau of Agriculture, of the International Exhibition then delivered the following ad- dress : Mr. President and CknUenwn of the National Agricultural Congress.— It has been intimated to me that it may be proper to offer a few remarks pertaining to the great interests of agriculture, in which most, now assembled, it is presumed, are directly concerned. I recognize the duty of each of us to do what within him lies to ad- vance the general good, and in the special mat- ter of Agriculture the rule is with me impera- tive,—else I should hesitate on this occasion in the presence of those at whose feet I might seek instruction. The arrival of this grand Centennial epoch, with its memories of the past, its pride in the present, and its hopes of the future has warmed our blood, and led to increased fellowship be- tween men of all sections, and all interests, and finds vent in expressions of admiration at their works. Indeed, it is only necessary to witness the gratification evident in every eye to realize the fact, that good results will endure long after we, who are now assembled on these Interna- tional Exhibition Grounds, shall have returned to our respective homes, and that our children whom we have brought hither to partake with us of present, enjoyment and gratification will relate to their children in another generation the glories of this day. Happy shall we be as a nation, as a people united by geographical bonds, by a common kindred, and a common interest, if we recognize in its full extent the moral as well as the materi- al force of the great centennial occasion, which has brought together, face to face, for the first time, the myriads which no other opportunity has afforded, and which, it is very certain can never occur again to them. But to go back to agriculture— the interest which most immediately and directly concerns us in this exposition. How much we have to be proud of— how much is collected together, In the ample structure devoted to it, calculated to quicken the.flow of blood within us— just as in an inverse -ratio the labor-saving machinery therein has lessened the unhealthy flow and con- sequent exhaustion in the harvest field, and elsewhere on the farm. A retrospective glance at the progress of the last half -century (lam not abte to extend my personal vision so far, but gain the facts at second hand ) reveals pro- cesses and progress, which all ages, all preceding time has failed to equal. One single era of fifty years has done all that. If it be a passing question in the mind of any one who hears me, whether the language used be not too strong, it were only necessary to convince him it is within bounds, to have witnessed the recent trial of mowers and reapers held under the au- spices of the Centennial Commission— more especially the reapers. Let me ask those who are old enough to go back to the days of the sickle, when handful by handful the grain was grasped, cut and laid down with careful preci- sion lest a straw should be misplaced— or even later in the order of mechanical succession which followed the grain cradle, an American inven- tion and invaluable improvement on the sickle, which, indeed, in the opinion of farmers still living, left no room for further progress in that direction. The acme of perfection has been reached ! Not so, thought the ingenious mechan- ical minds of our countrymen. All hail J to those who have so far succeeded in the great field of invention and made it yield golden fruit for the benefit of the whole human family. Step by step were advances made; each suc- cessive harvest told practically of the improve- ments on old inventions and ideas, or exhibited new principles evolved, elaborated, and turned to the advantage of mankind. It has truly been said that he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew pre- viously, is a public benefactor ; so it may be •aid with equal force that he who enables us to gather them with the least expenditure of sweat and toil is his equal in that direction, and the meed of praise should be awarded him with no Stinted hand. Indeed I make no doubt that future generations will erect statues of endur- ing bronze and marble to those who have so benefited the world at large. I may appear enthusiastic on this subject, but as I have no private purpose to subserve, it may be allow- able thus to give vent to feelings engendered by the recent trials on the Centennial grounds on the banks of the Neshamony. It was only the other day when the reaper cast the grain upon the platf orm,and an intelligent aid, the workman walking behind, or uncomfortably seated, was necessary to remove it. In a little while the Belf-raker came to relieve him and permit his labor to be directed in a more profitable sphere .-one more hand added to the producers of public and private wealth. As in the case ot the grain cradle, perfection appeared to have beeo reached, butlo I not so ; the harvester appeared upon the field, carrying upon a revolving apron the cut grain to a platform on which men rode, binding the straw into sheaves. Still further progress was in store, and to-day no manual assistance is required— the automatic binder en- circles the straw with a thread of wire, ties it with the precision of the sewing machine, and deposits it upon the ground ready to be carried to the stack-yard. Such was the work exhibit- ed to crowds of appreciative men who had met together to witness the trials. Thus we might go on with our illustrations of Agricultural machinery, among which only less important in degree is the thresher and separa- tor. I was recently in conversation with an old farmer who told me he had reached middle age when the flail was the only threshing in- strument (it was not entitled to the dignity of a machine) unless it were the oxen's feet as in the days of ancient Rome and Egypt. Then nearly simultaneously came the " sweep" and the endless-chain horse-power, and my inform- ant assured me that so far as he was informed, a single-horse tread or endless chain power erected by himself was the first machine for threshing set up in Philadelphia county. ^ Placed near a public road it was the wonder of all passers by, who would dismount to get a closer view of the " perpetual motion"— perpetual so long as it did not choke, or the horses legs tired not. Now where do we stand when scarcely forty years have been added to that period. The same farmer who related to me his experience, him- self threshes by steam, and machines exist by which it is claimed 2000 bushels of grain may be threshed within a working day— not only threshed, but if need be, winnowed, bagged, and made ready for transportation to mill or market. I might refer with equal pride to our improved portable steam engines, to the hay tedder, an invaluable aid when aid is most need- ed ; to the hay loader, an endless-chain which elevates the cured grass and in a few minutes deposits it upo i the wagon ready for the mow- to the grain drill, sowing with speed and almost mathematical precision, and tho' last, still loom- ing up in the future as an agency of immeasur- able power and worth— the steam plough, with which I have personally had some practice. The difficulties in securing and agreeably di- recting manual labor, will continue to urge on- ward mechanical minds to further triumphs over matter, and we may reasonably calculate on advances in the near future : these advances cannot, however, be prompted by the adoption of resolutions or simple expressions of appro- bation by this convention. But other interests may be forwarded and pressed upon the atten- tion of our farmers, and those to whom is com- mitted the government of state— notably among these, that of forestry, and the establishment of schools for instruction in that all-important in- dustry, now looming up in so vast proportions. On the 15th instant there will be assembled in the Judges Pavillion the Second Annual Con- vention of the American Forestry Association, and in their name, and by authority of their president, I invite you to attend. I will not further occupy your attention whilst others better able to interest you are present. If I shall have said a word to excite pride in our common pursuit, my object will have been accomplished. A brief response was made by the president. On motion a committee of three, on creden- tials, consisting of Col. Thomas Clairborne, of Tenn., Dr. Thos. P. Janes, of Ga., and Prof. N. S. Townshend, of Ohio, was appointed by the president. Vice-president, J. R. Dodge, of the District of Columbia, having taken the chair, the presi- dent delivered the annual address, entitled " A Retrospect of American Agriculture."* On motion the thanks of the Congress were tendered for the address. Remarks concerning the objects of the Con- gress were made by A. J . Duf ur of Oregon, Lewis F. Allen of New York and Mr. Hawley of New York. Mr. Bev. A. Martin, of Georgia, presented a series of resolutions in reference to a Secre- tary of Agriculture, whereupon, on motion, it was resolved that a committee on resolu- tions be appointed to which the resolutions just presented and all other resolutions, ex- cept those relating to routine business be re- ferred. Adjourned. The Congress met at 8 o'clock P. M., in the hall of the Belmont Hotel. Joseph Harris, of Rochester, N. Y., delivered an address on " The Outlook of American Ag- riculture." Remarks complimentary to the address, and suggested by it were made by Messrs. Allen, of N. Y,, Davie of Ky., West, ot Oregon, and others. The president announced the following committee on resolutions : Messrs. Welch, of Iowa, Roberts, of N. Y., Martin of Georgia, Whitman, of Maryland, and Woodward, of Pennsylvania. The Secretary, Prof. Geo. E. Morrow, of Iowa, delivered an address on " The Objects and Work of the National Agricultural Con- gress." A discussion of the subject was par- ticipated in by Messrs. Allen, Hawley, Rob- erts and others. Adjourned. *This address and others presented will follow the general proceedings. SECOND DAY. The Congress was called to order in the Judges' Hall at 10 A. M. In the absence of the author, the secretary read a paper on *• American Agricultural Literature," by Dr. E. L. Sturtevant, of Mass. Hon. J. R. Dodge, Statistican of the Depart- ment of Agriculture of the United States read an address upon " The Uses of Agricul- tural Statistics," for which the thanks of the Congress were tendered. Resolutions in reference to the census were presented by Horace J. Smith, of Penn- sylvania, and referred, under the rule, to the committee on resolutions. Hon. Thos. P. Janes, Commissioner of Ag- riculture of the State of Georgia, read an ad- dress on " Agricultural Reform." The thanks of the Congress were tendered for the ad- dress. Adjourned. 3 O'CLOCK, P. M. The committee on credentials reported, presenting the names of delegates, &c. Delegates, &c., Accredited to the Na- tional Agricultural Congress. From ALABAMA.— Dr. J.T. Tichenor, President of the Agricultural College of Alabama, Auburn. CALIFORNIA.— John H. Gardiner, Rio Vista. CONNECTICUT.— T. 8. Gold, Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, West Cornwall. DELAWARE.— D. J. Murphy. Newark Grange, James McKane, Newark Grange, William Dean, Newark Grange. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.— J. R. Dodge, Depart- ment of Agriculture; Judge J. W. Gray, Pres. Potomac Fruit Growers' Association ; Dr. J. E^ Snodgrass, Secretary Potomac Fruit Growers' Association ; Chalkley Gillingham, Potomac Fruit Growers' Association ; Dr. George Gross, Potomac Fruit Growers' Association. GEORGIA.— Dr. Thos. P. Janes, Commissioner of Agriculture, Atlanta ; J. S. Newman, Dept. of Agriculture and Secretary State Horticultural Society, Atlanta ; Prof. P. H. M«il, Jr., Chemist Dept. of Agriculture, Atlanta ; Col. T. J. Smith, Master State Grange, Oconee ; Hamilton Yancey, Col. Geo. W. Adams, Bev. A. Martin, Dahlonega, Col. Geo. R. Black, Dr. H. H. Cary, La Grange, all from the Georgia State Agricultural Society ; Col. W. T. N ewman, Georgia State Grange ; Col. T. G. Holt: P. J. Berckmans, Augusta. ILLINOIS.— From Illinois State Farmers' Asso- ciation : Hon. John Wentworth, Chicago ; Jona- than Periam, Chicago ; H. D. Emery, Chicago; Milton George, Chicago ; Thos. McD. Richards, Woodstock; Hon. D. J. Pinckney, Mt. Morris; M. B. Lloyd, Orion ; Lewis D. Steward, Piano ; A. J. Alexander, Oilman ; Gen. L. F. Ross, Avon ; A. C. Hammond, Warsaw; Maj. E. A. Giller, Whitehall ; John W. Hunter, Owaneco ; Geo. W. Minier, Minier ; Hon. Maiden Jones, Tuscola ; Hou. E. Roessler, Shelbyville ; B. Pullen, Cen- tralia; Capt. Geo. Hunter. Carlinville; Hon. J. M.Washburn, Carterville ; Hon. JohnLandrigan, Albion. From Henry Co. Agricultural Board: M. B. Llovd, Orion. Dr. A. G. Humphrey, Gales- burg ; W. C. Flagg, Moro. INDIANA.— From Delphi Grange : Georire Gilli- f ord, Delhi ; H. B. Gilliford, Delhi. IOWA.— From State Agricultural College : Pres. A. S.Welch, Ames; Prof. Geo. E. Morrow, Ames. From Iowa State Horticultural Society: Prof. H. H. McAfee, Ames. From Ames Grange: Master A. J. Graves, Ames. C. F. Clarkson, Mel- rose; L. E. Williams, Montrose; James Hall, Lacona. KENTUCKY.— Col. W. J. Davie, Commissioner of Agriculture, &c., Frankfort ; John R. Proctor, Kentucky Geological Survey. MARYLAND.— Hon. Lloyd Lowndes, Jr.; Corne- lius Staley ; L. A. J. Lamott ; A. Bowie Davis, Brookville; Wm. B. Hill ; Maj.Wm. B. Matthews; George Thomas ; Gen. John Carroll Walsh ; Gen. L. Giddings ; J. Howard, McHenry ; Edmund Law Rogers ; William Ward ; Col. Edward Wil- kins ; Col. John R. Emory ; Gen. E. L. F. Hard- castle, Easton; L. L. Waters, Princess Anne; George Hayward; Ezra Whitman, Baltimore: Wm. B. Sands, Baltimore. MASSACHUSETTS. — Prof. Levi Stockbridge, Mass. Agricultural College, Amherst. MINNESOTA.— From State Grange: Thomas Tunis Smith, St. Paul. From State Agricultural Society : Wyman Elliott, Minneapolis. MISSOURI.— C. V. Riley, State Entomologist, F. B. Chamberlain, St. Louis. NEW HAMPSHIRE.— From State Board of Agri- culture: Hon. Moses Humphrey, Chairman of the Board ; J. W. Sanborn, Supt. College Farm. NEW JERSEY.— From State Agricultural Soci- ety : P. T. Quinn, Newark ; W. A. Monell ; Hon. Amos Clark ; E. G. Brown. From State Grange : 3. W. Nicholson, Camden ; Wm. M. Iliff ; Enos G. Budd, Budd's Lake ; David T. Haines ; J. V. D. Duryea. NEW YORK.— X. A. Willard, President N. Y. Dairymen's Association, Little Falls ; Prof. I. H. Roberts, Cornell University, Ithaca. From Ba- tavia Farmers' Club : Henry Iver ; Geo. W. Scott. Lewis F. Allen, Buffalo ; Geo. A. Martin, Buffalo; Joseph Harris, Rochester; H. Bowlby Willson, 19 West 46th street, New York. OHIO.— Prof . N. S. Townshend, State Agricult- ural College, Columbus; Dr. John A. Warder, Pres. National Forestry Association, Cleves. From Butler Co. Grange : S. Silver ; Jos. Allen. From Muskingum Township Farmers' Club- Marietta : Levi Bartlett ; Jes. Wood ; I. G. Bar- ker ; M. A. Stag. OREGON,— A. J. Dufur, Portland ; M. Wilkins, Willamette Forks ; James Bruce, Corvallis. PENNSYLVANIA.— Burnet Landreth, Chief of Bureau of Agriculture International Exhibition, Philadelphia; Dr. A. L. Kennedy, Society for Promoting Agriculture, Philadelphia ; Horace J. Smith, Philadelphia ; John A. Woodward, Pres. Centre Co. Agricultural Society; A.Y. H. Adams, Agl. Editor Herald, Carlisle; Dr. E. A. Hertz, Lancaster Co. Agricultural and Horticultural Society; J. L. Landis, Lancaster Co. Society; Henry M. Engle, Marietta Agr'l Society. From Merion Grange: Win. H. Holstein; Edwin Moore ; Geo. W. Rijrhter. From Bucks county Agricultural Society : Robt. K. Tomlinson; Robt. Ivins, Langhorne ; M. Amanda Heston ; Rachel W. Shallcross ; Henry M. Engle, Lancaster Co. Horticultural Society, Marietta ; John A. Smull, Harrisburg. TENNESSEE.— Col. Thos. Clairborne, Nashville. VIRGINIA.— From Catoctin Farmers' Club : D. H. Vandeventer ; Col. S. E. Chamberlin, Water- ford; C. Gillingham. FROM OTHER NATIONS.— Prof. Thos. Segelcke, Royal Agricultural College, Copenhagen, Den- mark ; Prof. Jayme Batalha Reis, General Agri- cultural Institute of Portugal, and Vice Presi- dent of the Royal Central Agricultural Society of Portugal; C. Rovere, Sec'y of the Portugal Commission ; A. Caubert, Delegate of the Soci- ety of French Agriculture; James Perault, Canada. Representatives from five nations and twen- ty-one states, including those from five agri- cultural papers, seven Granges, fourteen societies, seventeen official government asso- ciations, and seven agricultural colleges, comprising 133 persons were known to be present, besides many not reported to the Secretary. On motion a committee of one from eaeh state represented, to nominate officers for the ensuing year was ordered. Hon. L. F. Allen, of New York, read an ad- dress on " American Live Stock," at the con- clusion of which a vote of thanks was unani- mously tendered. Pres. X. A. Willard, of the New York Dairymen's Association, delivered an address on " American Dairying." The thanks of the Congress were voted therefor. Mr. Davis, of Maryland, gave some interest- ing reminiscences of the first refrigerator in Maryland. The President announced as the committee on nominations, Prof. N. S. Townshend, of Ohio ; W. J. Davie, of Kentucky ; L. L. Wa- ters, of Maryland ; Col. Thos. Clairborne, of Tennessee ; L. E. Williams, of Iowa ; John H. Gardiner, of California ; A . C. Meeker, of Colorado ; T. S, Gold, of Connecticut ; Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, of District of Columbia ; Dr. H. H. Cary, of Georgia ; M. B. Lloyd, of J lli- nois ; Alfred Gray, of Kansas ; Prof. Levi 11 Stockbridge, of Massachusetts ; T. T. Smith, of Minnesota ; C. V. Riley, of Missouri ; Hon. Moses Humphrey, of New Hampshire ; J. V. D. Duryea, of New Jersey ; X. A. Willard, of New York; A. J. Dufur, of Oregon; Dr. A. L. Kennedy, of Pennsylvania ; Col. S. E. Cham- berlin, of Virginia. Adjourned. 8 P. M., BKLMONT HOTEL. The President stated he had -received from H. Bowlby Wilson, of New York, a paper on ** Money considered as an industrial tool." On motion the paper was referred to the com- mittee on resolutions. Hon. Alex. Delinar, of Philadelphia, who was to have addressed the Congress on " The Grain Crop of 1876," stated that the paper he had prepared was largely statistical, and that instead of reading he would ask leave to print it ; but consented to give the substance of the paper in extemporaneous form. The thanks of the Congress were tendered him. The question of publishing the proceedings of the meeting was then discussed, and on motion of Prof. Roberts, of New York, it was resolved that each person who had presented a paper should be permitted to publish it in such periodical as he might desire, and that he be requested to furnish each member of the Congress a copy at its expense. Ad- journed. THIRD DAY. JUDGES' HALL, 10 A. M. Resolutions by Dr. Kennedy, of Pennsylva- nia; and Prof. C. V. Riley, of Missouri, concern- ing the Rocky Mountain Locust, were psesent- ed and referred to the committee on resolu- tions. Invitations to visit the special agricultural exhibition in the Kansas and Colorado build- ing, and that of the department of agriculture in the Government building were accepted, the visits to be made during the noon recess. Col. Thomas Clairborne, of Tennessee, de- livered an address on " Our Southern Agri- culture," for which the thanks of the Con- gress were voted. Extended discussion of the agricultural capabilities of the South was participated in by Messrs. Davie. of Kentucky; Tichenor, of Alabama, and others. Adjourned. 3 P.M. Prof. Townshend, of Ohio, in behalf of the committee on nominations, reported as fol- lows : The committee impressed with the energy and courtesy of our present President, Wil- lard C. Flagg, of Moro, 111., unanimously re- commended his re-election. For vice-Presidents see list. [Printed in the list of officers.] Our present excellent Secretary George E. Morrow, for various reasons, which to the committee seem sufficient, declines a re-elec- tion. The committee have the pleasure to re- commend Horace J. Smith, of Pennsylvania, whose work in this grand exposition is a suf- ficient guarantee that he is eminently the man for secretary. Your committee recommend Ezra Whitman of Baltimore, for treasurer, and that Presi- dent, Secretary and Treasurer act as Execu- tive Committee. For the next place of meeting we recom- mend Chicago or Baltimore. The time of the meeting to be published by the president. The officers recommended by the com- mittee were unanimously elected and the president and secretary elect briefly acknowl- edged the honor done them. The question of the place for the next meeting was then taken up, and Buffalo, At- lanta, Nashville, Chicago and Baltimore were suggested. Chicago was finally fixed upon. Mr. Davie, of Kentucky, suggested that the time of meeting be fixed at the same date with that of some other large organization. Pres. A. S. Welch, of the Iowa Agricultural College delivered an address on " Agricul- tural Education or the True Work of National Industrial Schools." At the conclusion Mr. Davie, of Ky., moved that the thanks of the Congress be extended to Pres. Welch for his able address, which motion was unanimously adopted. Ex-Secretary Morrow reported the expen- ses of his office and that of the president for the past year as $43.75 and that he held $2 of the funds of the Congress making the balance due $41.75 for which an order on the treasurer was ordered to be issued. He also reported the receipt at this meeting of $92, being $3 each from 30 members and $2 from another. An address was then read by Prof. Norton S. Townshend of the Ohio Agricultural Col- lege on "Agricultural Education," and the thanks of the Congress were extended to him- The topics of the addresses of Pres. Welch and Prof. Tewnshend being under considera- tion, Prof. Thomas Segelcke,of the Royal Ag- ricultural College of Denmark at Copenhagen, was called upon. He said that they had but a small country, but their agricultural college had been established 20 years, and he thought their people were well pleased with the re- sult. The two principles of practical and theoretical instruction should be combined. They have five departments of agriculture, 12 veterinary science, forestry, surveying and gardening, and teachers in each of the vari ous branches. Besides the State Agricultural College, with 70 different teachers, and taking two years for its course, they have a lower class of schools for the poor, occupying only ten months. He returned thanks for admis- sion to the meetings and for all the friend- ship extended to him in the United States- He hail spent three months here, one-half in the exhibition and one-half traveling through the country, and J^d always been received most kindly ; and he felt it a duty to express his thankfulness for the courtesies extended to him. The subject of agricultural education was further discussed by Messrs. Stockbridge, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Mi- mer, of Illinois, Kennedy, of Pennsylvania, Tichenor, of Alabama, Williams, of Iowa, and Riley, of Missouri. The following gentlemen were unanimously elected honorary members : Prof. Thomas Segelcke of Denmark ; Prof. Jay me JBatalha Reis, of Portugal ; C. Rovere, of Portugal ; A. Caubert, of France ; James Pt-rrault, of Canada. The committee on resolutions made their report, and after discussion the following were adopted : Concerning Agricultural Statistics Pre- sented by W. C. Flagg. Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed with the power to appoint sub- committees in the several states and territor- ies, whose business it shall be to secure uni- form legislation in the several states and ter- ritories on the subject of the collection of statistics ; and such additional legislation by the United States as shall give full and relia- ble information in regard to all branches of agriculture. [J. R. Dodge, of District of Columbia : T. P. Janes, of Georgia, and Alfred Gray, of Kansas, were appointed the committee.] Concerning the Rocky Mountain Locust Presented by C. V. Riley of Missouri. WHEREAS, The people of some of the West- ern and Northwestern states have again been afflicted by the Rocky Mountain Locust Scourge, and WHEREAS, The devastation of this insect form a most serious obstacle to the settlement and welfare of much of the country between the Mississippi and the mountains, and these devastations have become a national calami- ty, and WHEREAS, There is much to learn of the native breeding places of the pest, and some hope that by more thorough knowledge of those native breeding places, and of the causes of the migration therefrom, we may be able to prevent the invasion of the more fer- tile country to which the species is not indi- genous ; therefore Resolved, That it is the emphatic opinion of this congress that some action should be taken by the National Government that will have for its ob- ject the palliation or extinction of this crying evil. That we consider that Congress owes it to the people ef the West to take this matter into con- sideration, and we call upon the next National Legislature to follow the example of other na- tions under like circumstances, and appoint a special commission for the thorough investi- gation of the subject. That the passage of some such bill as that in- troduced during the last Congress by Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, while contemplating the in- vestigation of a few other insects of national importance, such as the cotton worm of the South, would have been of vast moment to the people of the South and West, and would have brought about the needed investigation into the locust question. A SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. Presented by Bev. A. Martin, of Georgia: Resolved, That it is the opinion of the National Agricultural Congress, that the agricultural in- terest of the country is one of, if not the most, important in the Union ; and should receive the fostering care and protection of the Government. Resolved, That we urge upon Congress the jus- tice and the wisdom of creating a position in the Cabinet upon an equal footing as to rights, priv- ileges, &c., to be called the " Secretary of Agri- culture," whereby the interests of agriculturists may be fully represeated and consulted, as well as the Monied, War, Naval and other interests less important than agriculture. Resolved, That we suggest to the state and county agricultural societies throughout the Union, that they petition Congress to this effect, to wit : That the agricultural interests be repre- sented in the National Cabinet, and by a suc- cessful farmer. Resolved, That the Secretary be instructed to forward a copy of these resolutions to the Pres- ident of the United States Senate and the Speak- er of the United States House of Representa- tives, with the request to lay them before the bodies over which they preside. UNIFORMITY OF WEIGHTS, MEASURES AND MONEY. Presented by Dr. A. L. Kennedy, of Penn- sylvania: Resolved. That the season of an International Exhibition is an eligible one during which to arrive at a general agreement on the subject of a uniform system of weights and measures, and one monetary unit ia the United States. Resolved, That a committee of one from each state here represented, be appointed to corre- 6pond with committees that are, or may be ap- pointed by American and Foreign organizations on this subject, and that said committee, after auch correspondence, shall report such modifica- tion of our system of weights and measures, as may to them seem most desirable. [See committee with list of standing com- mittees.] FARMS FOB REFORMATORIES. Presented by Dr. Kennedy: Resolved, That the Secretary be, and he is in- structed to address the officers of Reformatories tor juvenile offenders, in the institutions of the United States not already provided with farms, and to urge upon them the importance of intro- ducing agricultural labor as a portion of the dis- cipline of their institutions. THANKS TO SECRETARY. The following, offered by Mr. Davie, of Ky., was unanimously adopted : Resolved, That the thanks of the Congress be given to the retiring Secretary, Mr. G. E. Mor- row, for the able, constant and effective per- formance of his duties aa secretary of this body which was with him a labor of love and not of profit. Resolved, That this resolution be spread upon the minute book of this Congress. THANKS TO PHILADELPHIANS. The following, offered by Geo. E. Morrow, was unanimously adopted : Resolved, That the thanks of this Congress are tendered to Horace J. Smith, Dr. A. L. Kennedy and other of our Pennsylvania members, for their effective aid in obtaining places of meeting, and to Capt. Landreth and Hon. Jno. B. Hawley for the use of Judges' Hall and other attentions shown us on the Exhibition Grounds. On motion adjourned to meet at the Belmont Hotel this evening after adopting a resolution that the Executive Committee be authorized to take such action as to them seemed best, regarding the publication of the transactions. EVENING SESSION. This session was informal. Remarks were made by A. L. Murdock, of Boston, and Dr. Snodgrass, of Washington. The following gentlemen were elected members of the Congress : L.Williams, Montrose, Iowa; Jas. Hall, Lacona, Warren county, Iowa; M. Wilkins, Willamette Forks, Oregon; James Bruce, Corvallis, Oregon; F. B. Chamberlain, St. Louis, Mo. ; Rev. G. W. Minier, Minier, 111.; L. Fallen, Buffalo, N. Y.; J. E. Snodgrass, Washington, D. C.; Dr. A. G. Hum- phrey, Galesburg, III.; Jno. A. Small, Harrisburg, Pa.; Virgil G. Gilmer, Nashua, N. H.; Horace J. Smith, Philadelphia, Pa.; C. Gillingham, Acco- tink, Va. The session of the Congress was then de- clared closed by Pres. Flagg.— HORACE J. SMITH, Secretary. 14 NATIONAL, AGRICULTURAL, CONGRESS. A RETROSPECT OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. By W. C FLAQQ. Fellow Members of the National Agricultural Congress :— In coming before you at this, our Fifth Annual Meeting, to deliver the address which the position I have the honor to occupy requires, the place and the year suggest the proper topic of discourse. Standing at the birth place of the American nation, at the close of the first century of its existence, it is natural that our thoughts should revert to the past condition and progress of our American Agriculture. American Agriculture was peculiar in the fact that it placed a large body of civilized inhabi- tants on the virgin soil of the New World, under a climate very unlike that of the parts of Europe from which our immigration came. Yet. during the two centuries and a half which we may say in round numbers covers our civilized agricult- ural history we may be said to have rapidly run over the usual course of agricultural develop- ment. AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT. Our progenitors, as in other countries, first commenced to gather the spontaneous products of the forest and flood. They were fishermen, hunters and woodsmen, rather than farmers; just as many of our inhabitants in the wilds of Maine and Oregon are to-day. There succeeded a period of pastoral agriculture, not so well de- fined in the wooded Atlantic States but marking a distinct stage in the great prairies of the West and Southwest. During this period the breeding and grazing of cattle, horses and even sheep and swine, alternated with hunting, fishing and other occupations of the backwoodsmen. We see this going on in Texas, Kansas and Colorado to-day. Next in order, apparently, came a one idea agri- culture in the form of growing a staple upon which the farmer risked his whole chances of success, and which occupied but a small portion of his time, leaving abundant leisure for more savage pursuits during the rest of the year. This was seea in the tobacco culture of the Atlantic coast, in the early day, and in the cotton culture of the South at a later period. It is seen in a later and modified form in the wheat culture of the Genesee valley and of the Northwestern and Pacific States. It has generally proved, in the long run, exhaustive and impoverishing, and consequently is succeeded by mixed agriculture in which the farmer seeks a diversity of crops according to his intelligence; and attempts to check the waste of fertility which is going on. Not unf requently the alternative of abandoning the worn-out lands has been chosen, and real es- tate declines in price, and population diminishes while the farmer and his family seek "fresh fields and pastures new" in the Great West- Such is now the condition of parts of New Eng- land, Virginia and other states. In a few places only we have reached the point of development known as intensive agriculture and which may be rather called market gardening than strictly agriculture. Our market gardeners and nur- serymen seem more and more to shelter them- selves and their products under glass, and this again suggests that the violent alternations of our climate may prevent the adoption of inten- sive agriculture in many parts of our Union. RAPID PROGRESS OF THIS DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICA. All these various phases of agricultural pro- gress have been experienced in our country in a brief space of time, and somewhat modified by the general diffusion of trade, may be all seen at work in different sections of our country to-day. This somewhat confuses the understanding in reviewing the agricultural history of our coun- try; but the difficulty is more apparent than real. ABORIGINAL AGRICULTURE. Although the western world has been discov- ered nearly 400 years, the first permanent settle- ments in the notably agricultural states of our Union are hardly two centuries and three-quar- ters old. Previous to that time, and indeed for many years after, American agriculture was the art of usually unskilled Indians, and occupied but a very small part of our arable land. The Plymouth settlers of 1620 found the red men growing corn, the squash, the pumpkin, a spe- cies of bean, a kind of sun-flower and tobacco. Their hoes were made of clam shells, or of the shoulder blades of the moose. Their manure was fish, in the hill. Hendrick Hudson in hi» first visit to the river that has received his name says that he saw corn and beans enough to freight three ships. The author of the history of New York states that three to four hundred acres were found in cultivation about some of the Indian villages. In the country of the Sen- ecas in 1687 the forces of the Marquis de Nou- ville claimed to have destroyed 1,200,000 bushels of maize. This seems an extraordinary story ; but over half of our Illinois counties each pro- duce annually a much greater average. The early settlers of Virginia bought such an amount of corn from the natives that we may suppose it was grown there also to a considerable extent. The Indians of the new Gulf States were still more advanced. They cultivated maize, peas, beans, pumpkins, melons and sweet potatoes. De Soto and his followers in their romantic raid found great stores of corn and even of corn meal among nations that had passed from the condi- tion of hunters to that of a fixed tillage. This was in the lower Mississippi Valley. Still far- ther West the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Aiizona have for an indefinite period prose- 15 cuted agriculture with irrigation. In the Illi- nois country, Marquette found abundance of corn, beans and melons. Bartram thought from his examination of old Indian town sites that the persimmon, honey locust, Chickasaw plum, mulberry, black walnut and shell bark hickory were cultivated by the aborigines, as were the apple and peach at a later period when intro- duced by Europeans. From the Kennebec, and even the northern shores of Lake Superior, to the Mexican border and beyond, the Indian was probably advancing in agricultural art and in Mexico and Peru had settled down to established courses of industry. But it was agriculture without metal tools and without domestic ani- mals. It is said that th e North American Indian had no domestic animal except the dog, and that he was not used even for the chase, but was sim- ply a pet. The agriculture of the aboriginal pe- riod was mostly the work of women, using tools of stone, shell or bone in the more sandy and fertile soils along the streams. EARLY AGRICULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES. There was no immediate change made in this state of things by the coming of the white man. The dense forests, the abundant game, the In- dian hostilities, the predatory animals, the want of markets, all delayed the progress of agricult- ure. But some advance was made in the cen- tury and a half that elapsed between the land- ing of the May Flower and the battle of Bunker Hill. At the time of the Declaration of Indepen- dence our population was probably less than 3,000,000 including 500,000 slaves. In New Eng- land which had nearly one-fourth of this popu- lation, the great body of the people were farm- ers, working on small farms, but probably de- voting a good deal of time to the pursuits of the hunter, fisherman and wood cutter. Elliott quotes from " The American Traveler" an esti- mate of the exports of New England in 1770 from which I gather that of £370,500 valuation of ex- ports, £12,000 were horses and live stock and £13, 000 pickled beef and pork. Nearly all the re- mainder were products of the forest or fisheries —mainly the latter. New England therefore at that time probably did not much more than sup- ply her own population with agricultural pro- ducts. In Virginia and Maryland where the growth of tobacco commenced at an early day, the agri- cultural exports were much more important. Jefferson states that Virginia exported 70,000 hogsheads of tobacco in 1758, and at the time of the beginning of the revolution estimated the annual exports of that state to equal £850,000, which includes 55,000 hogsheads of tobacco, 800,- 000 bushels of wheat, 600,000 of Indian corn, 4,000 barrels of pork, 1,000 barrels of beef, and 5,000 bushels of peas, besides flax seed, hemp, cotton, horses, &c. Six-sevenths at least of the exports of Virginia at the time appear to have been ag- ricultural products. Tobacco was already ex- hausting the soil and its culture diminishingr and Jefferson rejoiced at the fact and advocated the growth of wheat and live stock. In South Carolina I believe the principal agri- cultural product of the colonial period was rice, though some strong efforts had been made, with partial success, to establish silk culture. Here as in Louisiana, under the French, attempts were made at growing other tropical and semi- tropical products with a varied success. The growth of the sugar-cane was begun. Indigo was planted and cotton was experimented with, though the lack of cheap ginning processes prevented its extensive culture until the subse- quent period. Far up in the French Louisiana, In what was afterwards the Illinois country, wheat and cattle were already staple products and on occasion of need, a large surplus could be furnished to the regions about New Orleans. Clear around the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maine to Louisiana, and scattered along the great river, Mississippi, the beginnings were made of the great agricultural empire whose chief development has taken place at a period far subsequent even to the revolutionary period. In 1790, when our first census was taken, we had a population of 3,929,214, settled on an area of 239,935 square miles. One-thirtieth of this population was found in cities of 8,000 inhabi- tants or over. The population of that period, although we have no classification of its occupa- tions, must have been very largely engaged in agriculture or kindred pursuits that could be prosecuted with it— such as hunting, lumbering and fishing. Every person in most communities had a direct interest in practical agriculture. There was not at that period, nor a time long subsequent, anything of what is now called Sci- entific agriculture— or the use of scientific facts and scientific methods in the study of the best practical agriculture. Agricultural implements down to within a period in the memory of many now living were scarcely better than in the days of Hesiod or of the Scriptores, Rei Rusticae, The improved races of horses, cattle, sheep, swine and poultry, unless it may be thorough- bred horses, were little known or sought. From Maine to Georgia the westward sweep of culti- vation, like a forest fire, consumed the streets and burnt out the land. I wish I could say that in this last respect we had made a stay of the devastating hand of a pioneer and pilfering hus- bandry; but better methods seem only to be born of necessity. AGRICULTURB OF 1876. At the end of the first century of our national history, we find a population of 38,558,371, settled on 1,272,239 square miles. Our population has increased ten- fold, our settled area five or six-, fold. But one-fifth of this vastly increased pop- ulation lives in cities exceeding ei*ht thousand 16 1n population, and the relative number. Import- ance and wealth of the agricultural class has declined— very greatly in New England, compar- atively little in the Gulf States. At the last census barely one-half of our industrial popula- tion was found to be engaged in agriculture ranging as low as 12 and 13 per cent, in Massa- chusetts and Rhode Island, and as high as 80 and 81 in Mississippi and Arkansas. The " extensive" practice of agriculture limits agriculture to the sparser populations. Superintendent Walker, of the census bureau, states that as yet agriculture in the United States does not support a popula- tion of more than 45 to the square mile. Where the population exceeds that density it is sup- ported by other industries. In New England to-day, coming to details, ag- riculture in many of its aspects appears to be in a decline. The farms of Massachusetts are in- creasing in size, and there is a remarkable dis- appearance of farms of a small size. Through- out New England the subdivision of territorial property appears to have reached nearly its limit. The American population is deserting the farms in the older and more thickly settled com- munities and its place is filled by foreign popu- lation of fewer wants and greater economy. Farm lands in the midst of a population unsur- passed for intelligence and high character are seljng for less than the cost of the buildings, and for less than farms a thousand miles away from the sea board. This has been the result wrought out more rapidly than elsewhere en the compar- atively thin soil of New England. The more fertile soils of New York, New Jersey and Penn- sylvania are on the same road it may be pre- sumed, but have not gone so far. Maryland and Virginia, unequaled in many respects as to cli- mate and commercial advantages, were long ago plundered and impoverished by a profligate practice of agriculture, and their worn-out farms are deserted by migrating heirs, and sold for low prices to a new order of settlers. The Garolinas and Georgia differ but in degree ; and it seems omy a question of time when the whole American continent shall have been run over by this marauding husbandry. This seems a gloomy view, but is corroborated by the observation of intelligent foreigners. As I write, I take up Harper's Weekly of a late date and read a late notice of Lord Houghton, who has lately visited us. Lord Houghton is represented as saying: *k With regard to agriculture within the next fifty years, America will have been reduced, not- withstanding its immense space, very much to the condition of the European countries in gen- eral ; that was to say, she would have to recu- perate by artificial means the natural wealth that was now being exhausted." I take up the London Quarterly Review, of July, 1876, and read " Nothing now strikes a traveler more than the poverty of the land al- most in the neighborhood of large towns, which industry could easily have relieved, had it not been tempted away to distant, richer soils." CAUSES AFFECTING OUR AGRICULTURE. Several very important facts have been brought to bear on American agriculture during the last century that have essentially changed its condi- tions in different parts of the Union. WASTE OF SOILS. 1. First in point of time is the deterioration or waste of soil. The Atlantic shores were cleared of their forests with little forethought of the denudation that would strip the hills of their sometimes scanty covering of soil. The soil that was not transported from its original bed was cropped until it yielded returns that would not pay for the cultivation. The virgin fields to the westward prevented attempts at any due pres- ervation or restoration of fertility. The new lands of the West have been a continual dis- couragement to an improved agriculture in the East. IMPROVED TRANSPORTATION. 2. This discouragement has been prolonged by improved transportation. The New England farmer finds that Western corn is brought from Illinois or Iowa and sold for a less sum than he can usually produce it for. Reduce the unnec- essarily high freight rates and even this, cheap- est of the cereals, can be carried from the hun- dredth meridian (which I assume to be the West- ern boundary of profitable grain growing in the Mississippi Valley), to the sea board ; and more and more replace the local production. The case is still stronger in the growth of wheat whose culture continually recedes Westward, until it now nearly reaches the boundary line of profitable cultivation. The census of 1870 shows that New England did not produce more than half a bushel of wheat to each person of its pop- ulation, nor more than two and a half of corn. All the sea board states gave a similar, though not so extreme a result, which can usually be traced to the fact that Western grain is under- selling Eastern grain in its own markets. This produces a great temporary disturbance in Eastern practices of agriculture and in the prices of Eastern farm lands. It does not effect the East alone, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois farm- ers are disturbed and discouraged by the under- selling competition of states still farther West. The cattle of Kansas and Texas and the wheat of Minnesota are troublesome to the late pioneer states. Agricultural production grows less profitable all along the line from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. If we pass to the other end of the line, along our Western frontier, we find a precocious, pre- mature development of agriculture. Great crops of corn are grown quickly, but the cattle and swine and other live stock for its conversion into more compact forms have not yet arrived. These come with the wealth of older communi- ties. Immense areas of wheat are harvested L7 where there are no mills to convert them into flour, and few mechanics or other than farmers to purchase the product. Hence we have im- mense shipments of cheap, raw products over louff lines of railway to tide water. The high rates of freight and the low prices of products which usually come together, depress the mar- ket to an extent that makes production no long- er profitable. Hence we may say that while improved facili- ties for transportation have done much to in- crease and extend agricultural production, and to equalize the values of agricultural products and of farm lands it has not been an unmixed benefit. It will not be, perhaps, until the West- ern line of profitable cereal growth has been reached, when we may anticipate a reflex move- ment in cereal crops and their more general pro- duction in the East as well as the West. Corn will carry with it cattle and other live stock, and renewed and more general attention will be paid to the preservation and improvement of the fer- tility of farm lands. The chief advantage of modern transportation to the agricultural class I apprehend to be in the impulse that is given to intercommunication, the waking up of dormant energies, and the dis- semination of improved implements, improved varieties of agricultural plants and animals and improved processes. AGRICULTURAL, MACHINERY. 3. But one of the most remarkable facts af- fecting American agriculture, has been the Im- provement of Agricultural Implements and machinery. Least progress has been made, so far as economy of force is concerned, in im- plements used in turning and pulverizing the soil. ?et the plough, the harrow, and the culti- vator of to-day, are wonderful advances be- yond these of the Revolutionary period, or even of half a century ago. Down to within a period in the remembrance of many now liv- ing, the plough was of wood, pointed with iron and its wooden mould board perhaps, covered with strips of hoop iron. The reader of Gould's elaborate report of the trial of ploughs, in the New York Agricultural transactions of 1867, will remember the immense distance between the primitive American plough, described by Mr. Allen and the modern implements of Hoi- brook. Still more remarkable in the amount of labor saved, and the quality of work, have been the implements used in seed planting— the drill and the corn planter. More marked yet, is the work of the harvesting implements, the reaper, the mower, and the horse rake, and the threshing machine. It is true that these im- provements save labor in an unequal degree. A single person can rake, perhaps 20 acres, mow 10 acres, and harrow, roll or plant, equal or greater amounts of land ; but he cannot plough in any equal ratio. It is true also, that in many cases the cost of the work done, is not sensibly di- minished. But the fact remains, that a much larger number of bushels of grain, or tons of hay, and consequently of human food, can be made with far less expenditure of human labor, than ever before. A much smaller number of persons are needed in agricultural processes, a much larger number are set free to engage in other pursuits. In the ten agricultural states of the Northwest in 1870, but one-third of the people of the CTnited States averaged 53 bushels of corn for every man woman and child, and nearly 75 bushels ea3h of cereals. The ultimate result or tendency of this im- mense increase in the power of production, which, however, has its limits in the productive capacity of the soil, and the extent of its ara- ble acres, is difficult to foresee. It does not add in any equal ratio to the wealth of the agri- cultural class. The free-hold farmer of Ameri- ca, seems to me to follow very much the course of the manual laborer in other departments of industry. He obtains a subsistence, more or Jess bare, according to his conditions ; but the main profits of increased production go else- where, usually I think, to the trader or the transporter. The annual production and ad- dition to one national wealth, is undoubtedly immensely increased, but if we can trust the census reports, this wealth accumulates in the great cities. DIVISION OF LABOR. 4. Another, and remarkable modification of agricultural industry in America, has come from the division of labor, as our civilization and settlement advances. In the cabin of the pio- neer, all arts and trades may be found. The husbandman builds his bouse, makes his imple- ments, grinds his corn and makes his shoes. The wife spins, weaves and makes the clothing, gathers the simples that answer as medicines, and performs a hundred functions unknown to more advanced communities. Later develop- ments are changing all this, and go farther in the direction of destroying the much advocat- ed " mixed husbandry," and enforcing the hith- erto condemned custom, of confining1 agriculture to the raw products. The making of cheese, but- ter, cider, wine, vinegar, canned and dried fruits and vegetables, sugars, syrups, starch, brooms, «&c., &c., under a law of our social develop- ment became specialities, and leave the farm- houses for the factories. The farmer's work becomes therefore, more and more specialized and confined to culture of the soil proper. It remains to be seen whether this will be an ad- vantage, or the contrary. It is opposed to the rural economy, taught by many European and American agriculturists, but will bring the ad- vantages of greater concentration of purpose and skill of labor. THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 5. Scientific progress has had its effect on American agriculture, One hundred years ago there was no agricultural chemistry, meteorol- ogy, botany, geology or zoology, comparable 18 with the present. Johnson's How Crops Grow ; and How Crops Feed ; Darwin's Animals and Plants under Domestication, and the now re- gpectable array of more special books, bearing on many branches of agricultural science may even be considered tha product of the last quar- ter of a century. Attempts at scientific agri- cultural education have been commenced in nearly every state of the Union, under the agri- cultural and mechanical college grant. A great- ly extended test and use of fertilizers, has been made in all the old states. The effects of our variable climate on animal and vegetable life, begin to be comprehended in the light of pub- lic and private observations. The physiology of plants, and the discovery and dissemination of new varieties of grains, vegetables and fruits, are studied and prosecuted with vigor. The principles of animal life in the breeding and feeding of domestic animals, are studied and applied as never before. I do not say this in boastf ulness, for I believe as compared with other nations, we have much to learn, though I hope we have also some- thing to teach. The desire, and I may add the necessity, of immediate results, has made our agriculture and our science somewhat super- ficial and hasty, and not always sound. I only claim that we are " marching on." THE GENERAL RESULT. In considering these and other causes now at work, I conclude that the agricultural class of the United States, in common with that of other countries, has reached a point where its next movemeat may be an important one, not only for itself, but mankind. The increased intelligence of mankind, resulting from more general and free intercommunication, is having its effect on the conservative and slowly influ- enced agricultural class. It awakens to claim and take a part in the direction of affairs— to share in that democratic possession of society and government, which De Tocqueville, more than a generation ago, regarded as inevitable. Increased intelligence has improved our own soils, adopted better tools, selected better grains and grasses, grown heavier crops, bred better animals, and in many ways improved the quali- ty and the quantity of our agriculture. The farm houses and the out houses, are more adapted to their purpose. But the increased intelligence which has brought all this about, cannot rest here, even when improved agricult- ure becomes far more common than now. With increased knowledge comes consciousness of the fact, that the agricultural class is un- equally weighted in the race of life. The corn crop, as our statistican, Mr. Dodge, has said: " cannot be cornered," and the same fact is in a good degree true of all agricultural products. There is nearly complete mobility and free trade in agricultural products. If the demand be- comes limited, or if there is over production, the half-million farmers scattered over the Union cannot meet and resolve to plant half their land next year. They cannot adopt The tactics of the coal miners, the iron men or the book publishers, in preventing the free work- ing of the law of supply and demand. They cannot control prices like the trader, and trans- porter for a like reason. The power, or at least the habit of combination is waating. UNEQUAL LEGISLATION. With increased knowledge also comes the con- viction that the statute laws, as well as the "laws of trade," have been controlled in the in- terest of others than the agricultural class. Tho laws of taxation in nearly every state with which I am acquainted are most burdensome to its farmers. The bank charters and rail road charters give dangerous powers over the com- merce and transportation of agricultural pro- ducts, as do the powers granted telegraph com- panies over the transmission of commercial in- telligence. It has been deemed necessary to "encourage" manufactures by tariff s; book mak- ing by copyright ; invention by patents ; nation- al banks by gratuitous issues of notes ; periodi- cals by cheap postage; but the agriculturist with the exception of a tariff on sugar and wool and a cheap postage law in relation to seeds and cions, which Senator Hamlin and the express companies made haste to repeal, has been left to exemplify the working of the Laises faire principle, so far as help was concerned. This knowledge and these convictions will bring the remedy needful to a prosperous prosecution of agriculture— a fair field and no favor. It may come easily with the irresistible force of an en- lightened and judicious public opinion : but it is more probable that, like other great movements against accustomed and vested wrong, its way must be fought out with tongue and pen. Gentlemen, I have touched hastily only a few of the many topics that this subject and this oc- casion suggest. But, perhaps, I have said enough to show the vastness and the importance of the domain, geographical, scientific and economical, that an organization like this Should attempt to occupy. I believe that the addresses of the able gentlemen who have consented to come before us, will adduce still more incontrovertible evi- dence of the fact; and I trust the day is not far distant when those annual gatherings, like those of the Agricultural Society of France, shall number their hundreds and thousands of spec- ialists in every department of theoretical and practical agriculture. And when I look upon this vast array of the agricultural products and machinery of our country, supplemented by those of the remotest quarter of the globe, I think that even we, who, sometimes are half-% ashamed of our own enthusiasm, do not half comprehend the magnitude and importance of the work in which we are engaged. When the farmers of the world become what we would have them ; what the object lessons of this great exhibition, and the discussions of like gatherings shall make them, we shall enter upon that gold- en age of equality of rights and duties, which the democratic theory of government necessi- tates, but which can be only entirely reached through future years of earnest labor on the part of the friends of agriculture. The great work of the next generation 1 apprehend, is to secure the laboring class its rights of education and thrift ; and the mass of this class is made up of the men in whose behalf we have gathered here to-day. 19 OBJECTS AND WORK FOR THE NATIONAL AOR'L CONGRESS. By the Secretary, GEO. E. MORROW. The name of this association — the National Ag- ricultural Congress— suggests clearly two things as to its nature. First, It is a national organiza- tion ; not for the few, not for those of a section, not for any private or personal schemes ; but designed, so far as it is possible, to have its influ- ence extend over all the land. Next, it is an ag- ricultural association; its object is not, primarily, to advance religion, to discuss politics, to engage in works of charity, not any of these things, but, to quote from its constitution, " Its object shall be the collection and dissemination of informa- tion in relation to agriculture in the several states and territories, and concerning the climatic economical and other conditions affecting- its progress anel prosperity." It may also be said that in its relations to other associations for the promotion of agriculture, this Congress is designed to be friendly and co- operative, rather than a rival or critic, and again, I hope it may truthfully be said this is a modest and not an assuming or arrogant body. It is not claimed to be the only or the greatest instru- mentality for accomplishing the end for which it labors ; rather it is content to do what it can for the good of the agriculture of the country, rejoicing in any and every like work by what- ever means it may be accomplished. With the limitations and qualifications there still remains a marvelously wide field. We have all American agriculture and not any one spec- ialty in whatever relates to the cotton of the South, the grain of the West, the dairy, the cat- tle on the plains of Texas or the hills of New England ; in whatever concerns the producer of any agricultural product in his work, he may properly ask the interest and aid of this associa- tion. It may properly discuss the questions re- lating directly to production — tillage, varieties of seeds and animals, fertilization, etc.; it may and should go further than this and consider those things which affect the distribution of ag- ricultural products— the great question of trans- portation, with its important and complicated effects on the agriculture of the different sec- tions of the country, the home and foreign mar- kets, tariffs ; tnese and like topics appropriately may engage the thought and discussion of the members of the Congress. And so the important and as yet but imperfectly appreciated subject of agricultural statistics— how to secure their more prompt, accurate and thorough collection and dissemination— is directly within the letter and spirit of the object for which the association was formed. The vital question of agricultural education, and the equally important question of the education of the agricalturists ; the rela- tions of a host of sciences to agriculture, and the means of best applying their teachings ; all these and other topics of stupendous importance present themselves to the Congress. And lastly it may properly consider questions of legislation as these effect agriculture ; not in any partisan spirit ; not to seek any legislation in the special interest of agriculturists as a class— for as the farmers should oppose legislation in the special interest of any other class, they should equally oppose that which is offered as advancing their own special interests rather than for the good of all classes. But to consider and present the opinion of farmers on many questions in which they are vitally interested. For the improvement of agriculture in its re- lations to the individual and to the class we need two things— more information and more interest. To know more about it and to take more inter- est in it, that we may the better make use of the knowledge we have and that we may acquire. In the effort to gain information, the Congress should consider all the topics named in a broad, national way. We should remember that the steam car and the telegraph, that improved means of communication and transportation have largely abolished the isolation of farmers. It is no longer true that those of any one section can feel themselves independent of or uninter- ested in the condition of those of other sections. It is a serious misfortune that there should be, on the part of so many connected with agricult- ure, so strong a tendency to narrow-mindedness. The Congress should seek to know both the ac- tual and relative importance of subjects brought before it. Its sessions should be no place for the riding of the hobbies of narrow-minded men, to whom all the world seems to revolve around their little plans, interests or localities. It should seek to learn all that can be learned of the resources of all sections. The study of our agriculture by states or sections, as has been the custom in the past, is unsatisfactory, tending to produce this narrow-mindedness and imperfect conception of important and wide-reaching questions. The Congress may furnish a common meeting ground for the actual farmer, for the editor, the teacher, the scientist, the leader of societies connected with agriculture, and I hope it may be ever said of it that it is willing and anxious to hear the other side of all questions that its members are not so much advocates as they are seekers after the truth. In the development of increased interest in agriculture, for which there is surely much need, the members of this association may do much, by showing that they are themselves interested; that men of education and position think agri- culture worthy to be thought about and talked about, and not to be regarded as simply a disa- greeable means of securing a livelihood. I name three, methods of work for the Con- gress. First, and in some sense chief, by popular meetings, usually held once a year. There is power and influence in the sayings and doings »f representative bodies of men assembled to- gether "with one accord in one place." These meetings may discuss general topics, or, on oc- casion, special topics on which it is desirable to collect information or to stimulate and express public opinion. Second, by publishing its trans- actions, it will not be necessary to infringe on the province of national or state associations, but by presenting in a cheap yet permanent form the addresses and other actions of the an- nual meetings, a good which it is difficult to fully estimate, may be done in a series of years. As an illustration I need only refer to the addresses at the present meeting. It is not mere boasting to say that in no other way can an equally good knowledge of the history, progress and present position of our agriculture as a whole, and espe- cially in some of its great specialties, be so read- ily and conveniently obtained as by a careful reading of what has been spoken during this meeting. Third, I name special investigations by commissions or individual members. This branch would not be prominent in the near fu- ture perhaps, but it might ultimately become important and effective. It is not probable the association would ever find it advisable to as- sume the management of agricultural exhibi- tions. In each of the ways named, the Congress can exert a healthful and important influence in increasing our store of information, in stimula- ting interest, and in forming and concentrating public opinion on matters requiring action, leg- islative or individual. As most nearly representing my ideal of the future of this Congress, I would name some of our national associations of a scientific nature. As in them, so in this, I would have a division into sections for the more careful consideration of a variety of topics for which there might not be time nor opportunity before the general body. That the work proposed may be done effect- ively, the Congress needs an increased member- ship. It now relies, and I hope always will rely, for its funds solely on voluntary membership fees. It asks the aid in this way of all friends of agriculture ; and I believe this is the only aid for which it should ask ; believing as I do that there is place and room and need for the associa- tion ; believing as I do that it may have a pros- perous arid useful career, I look to those inter- ested in agriculture for its support. It seems to me we have now reached a position from whioh we may ask this support, feeling that the Con- gress is able to give a full return for all it will receive. The leading obstacles to success, as it seems to me, are three. First, the very magnitude of the work proposed and the wide field sought to be covered. As a rule, our successful associations connected with agriculture have had a special object, devoting themselves to the advancement of a specialty. The American Pomological So- ciety, which has done a great work and won a deservedly high position; the American, North- western and various state dairy associations which have been so largely instrumental in the rapid advancement of the dairy interests of America, may be named as cases in point. This is a real difficulty and to prevent the injurious effects of it will require wise and prudent man- agement. The second great obstacle to success is of kindred nature and is found in the vast ex- tent of our country, making it costly in time and money for many who may be interested to at- tend the meetings of the Congress. This may be met in part by having the meetings held in dif- ferent portions of the country, and is also partly met by the delegate as well as by personal mem- bership which has been provided. By this, the presence of even a single representative may give expression and emphasis to the views of the members of a large society or the mass of farmers in even an entire state. The third ob- stacle to popularity is one which, if human na- ture were perfect, need not be named. It is found in the.fact that the association makes no direct appeal to purely selfish motives. It docs not promise immediate, direct and specified pe- cuniary advantage to its members. It offers uo high salaries to induce men to become its lead- ers. It is not probable that it will try to advau ;e the political aspirations of its members. It offers little in the way of fame to those who work with it. Its hopes and expectations are rather that, quietly, perhaps slowly, it may exert an import- ant influence in advancing and developing the agricultural interests of the whole country, do- ing most for those regions and these individuals who will most earnestly and effectively work with it. In the near future our American agriculture must take a higher position. In no other coun- try has it advanced more rapidly, and in no other has it given greater returns to those engaged in it; but with advancing civilization, increasing population and rapidly growing competition, the mass of farmers must learn to rely more ou mind than on muscle; to give more importance to knowledge than to mere physical strength ; must grow to rely on themselves and not on leg- islation, and look for their profits to their farm products and not to increase in the selling price of their land. I look forward with hope to a higher intelligence, more wisely directed industry and a purer integrity among all farmers as the great means by which the difficulties and obstacles in the way of the general prosperity of the clans may be overcome. I look forward to the time when the farmers of all sections of the country, knowing each other better shall respect each other more, and work together more harmoni- ously and intelligently, and, hence, more effi- ciently advance their common prosperity. In all this, if it be wisely managed, the National Agricultural Congress may do much. It is young, but it has reached a position of which we have no need to be ashamed. We who are here may make this Centennial year the starting point of a career of vastly increased usefulness for this association which has called us together, and give it an impulse that shall cause it to be still young and vigorous at the second centen- nial of our country. 21 USES OF AGRICULTURAL STA- TISTICS. By JOHN R. DODGE. In this age of the world it can scarcely be nec- essary seriously to ask the question, What profit te there in Agricultural Statistics? There is no farmer of intelligence who is not himself a sta- tistician. He observes carefully the facts of ag- riculture, and of all science and art applicable to agriculture, classifies them and makes deduc- tions from them, and governs his practical operations in accordance with their teaching. He plows and sows, reaps and mows, harvests and stores and sells with the aid of his own sys- tem of agricultural statistics. But his own ob- servation or desultory investigation must be quite too limited I The facts which affect him are not confined to his farm, his county, state or country, but include in their range the entire world— the world of agricultural production and consumption, supply and demand, price and value, freight and sale. In this age of telegraphs, too, the statistician must not only be ubiquitous in locality, but instantaneous in celerity of col- lection, classification and deduction. Herein lies the necessity of professional statisticians, whose function it is to reduce the truths con- tained in a world of facts to order, to make of agricultural statistics a science. The uses of this science are golden in immedi- ate result. The cunning tradesman, alert for crop news, scans the prospect and prepares to wrench from the farmer the results of his hard labor. Statistics stands guard over the farmer's interest, foils the schemes of the speculator and saves the producer's money. A farmer in Mis- souri writes me that my advice relative to pros- pective prices of pork saved him a thousand dollars in a single season. The speculating class is organized for the plunder of the farmer, and the necessity is imminent for the earliest and fullest information for his protection. By agricultural statistics the farmer is able to compare and test the practieal results of stock improvement, experiment in culture, and sys- tems of agriculture. By it he can refute the universal applicability of the sweeping commer- cial adage, which is deemed by many a law, that the home price of a product is always governed by the ruling price in the country to which it is exported. Our corn crop is too heavy, both in avoirdupois and in cash, to yield perceptibly to the influence of foreign demand. Until recently the exports have not exceeded three per cent. The tail cannot " wag the dog" so easily. It is curious to see how uniformly and proportion- ally price advances as production recedes. In 1874 we had a so-called failure in the corn crop. I estimate it at 850,000,000 bushels. In 1875 the aggregate was enormous. I make it more than 1,300,000,000, and yet the value of the great crop was but one per cent, greater than that of the " failure"— the one $555,000,000, the other $650,- 000,000. As to wheat a different rule obtains. The price does not depend primarily and principally on quantity. With poor European harvests a large crop may bring a high price— with abundance abroad, a small crop at home, if it leaves a sur- plus, may bear a comparatively low price. Statistics teaches also the true value and tem- porary uses of pioneer farming, of the produc- tion of specialties and the true value " in the long run," for permanent results, of rational, scientific, restorative agriculture. There are problems presented daily which only agricult- ural statistics can solve, and upon which largely depends the future prosperity of the farming interest. We cannot here enumerate them, but a reference to one or two may suffice. The en- quiry has been often made of late, is PRODUC- TION DECLINING ? It has been assumed that we produce in proportion to population less of the great staples of production than formerly. It is the province of agricultural statistics to decide the question. The census alone cannot deter- mine it. Such is the fluctuation in rate of yield that the supply of a given staple may be actually increasing, while the product of the census year may be less than in its predecessor ten years be- fore. For instance, corn for 1869 was returned 760,944,549 bushels, and in 1859 the figures were 838,792,742. It has often been asserted, on the strength of these returns, that corn production was declining, not only per capita, but in abso- lute comparison of quantity. Is it so ? The year 1869 witnessed what in country parlance is called a "failure" of the corn crop. It is plainly folly to take such a crop for comparison. And this fact illustrates the absolute necessity of annual estimates, to supplement decennial returns. Since 1869 there have been six harvests exclusive of the present one. Of these six the largest and smallest stand in juxtaposition, the one in 1875^ the largest ever made is 1,321,000,000 bushels, and the other, another failure in 1874, 850,000,000 bushels. The increase in a single year is fifty-sir per cent. In 1870 and 1872 the product was near- ly 1,100,000,000. The average of annual estimates, for 1 he six years since the census, 1,047,000,000 bushels ; and this confirms the opinion founded on careful study of the history of cropping in 1869, that it was scarcely more than three-fourths of a full crop. Now let us examine a period of twenty-six years. We find that the yield per capita in 1849 was 25.5 bushels; in 1859, 26.6 bush- els, and in 1869, the year of a three-fourths crop, 19.7 bushels— the same result as that deduced from the period since that census. If we take the year 1875, the result is excessive, 30 bushels per capita, but include it in the period of six years past and we have 25.5— precisely the supply of 1849. As to wheat, a general deduction from com- parison of census exhibits is less erroneous. The increase in round numbers was from 100,000,000 to 173,000,000 and again in 1869 to 287,000.000. Now the latter was a large crop, yet the average for the six subsequent crops is 266,000,000, while the estimate for the last year of the six was 292,000,- 000. Distributed according to population, there was 4.3 bushels per head.in 1849 ; 5.5 in 1859 ; 7.46 in 1869, and for the period since 6.6 bushels. This shows an increase of more than fifty per cent, in the proportion of supply in twenty- six years, and is exactly in accordance with the history of the several crop years, and is a proof of the sub- stantial correctness of these estimates. The export figures illustrate further the fact of the large increase of wheat production. The total export of wheat and Hour in fifty years is equivalent to 1,062,000,000 bushels of wheat, of which 91,000,OOU were shipped during a single year, 1874. The exports of one-half of this period up to 1850, were only 178,000,000— Jess than twice those of 1874. The heavy increase during recent years is especially noteworthy, nearly half this semi-centennial aggregate having been shipped in ten years. While our population has nearly doubled since 1849, the quantity of all cereals taken together has more than doubled. The census reported 867,000,000 bushels; allowing something for incompleteness of that enumera- tion, the 2,000,000,000 bushels produced in 1875 allow a distribution of 46 bushels to each inhab- itant, in place of 37.4 census bushels, or possibly 40 with a complete enumeration. Our average supply since the last census exceeds 40 bushels : and thus is demonstrated the remarkable fact that with our rapid increase in numbers, per- haps without a parallel, we not only keep up our high standard of cereal production but actually advance it. This is owing to our vast areas in instant readiness for the plow, to our advance in variety and perfection of agricultural ma- chinery, and to the stimulus of a foreign de- mand which has never been so pressing as dur- ing the last ten years. It is possible to double our present population without diminishing this high rate of supply. There is more danger at present of over-production and unremunera- tive prices, than of scarcity. The proportion engaged in agriculture in the West is still too large, and far too large in the Sou^h, and the withdrawal of workers from rural to other in- dustrial arts would not only greatly facilitate the creation of wealth, but would siiniulate in- vention, labor-saving skill and industry in agri- culture. Having reached the conclusion that corn pro- duction is not declining, aud that the supply of wheat has increased fifty per cent., what can we say as to the meat supply and the numbers of horses? As to the latter, it is not found, ac- cording to the fears of too conservative farmers of a former generation, that multiplying rail- roads tends to diminish the use of horses. More horses are now used in taking people to the train than were formerly required to perform the whole journey. The census reports only the horses of the farm, without reference to those of the town or city, but for comparison, taking the numbers in proportion to population, there were nearly twenty to each one hundred people in 1850, quite twenty in 1860, and notwithstand- ing the waste of the war, eighteen in 1870. The increase since has at least equaled the advance in population. Coming to cattle, while we know that the numbers in the census are too low, es- pecially for Texas, California and the Territories, we may use them for comparison purposes, From 1850 to 1860 we find the number of all kinds of cattle slightly increasing, from 77 to 81 to each hundred of the population, and then wit- ness a decline to 62 in 1870. Since that date the numbers have increased, but not materially faster that the population. The consumption in the war was a prominent cause of the decline, and a growing preference to horses as a substi- tute for working oxen tended to further reduc- tion. The supply of sheep per capita was some- what greater in 1870 than in 1860, the ratio rising from 70 to 73, but less than in 1850, when there were 93 per hundred of population. But the most marked decline in supply has been in swine, the figures in these decennial periods being respectively 129, 105 and 65. The tendency is to still further decline in some of the princi- pal swine districts. There is another statistical point of especial interest in this connection. While numbers have declined in proportion to population the value of all farm animals divided among the popula- tion would give about $24 per head in 1850, $34 m 1860, and $44 in 1870. Not only has scarcity increased the value, but improvements in breeds has added size and weight, so that with smaller relative numbers we are able to feed our people and ship more beef and pork and lard than ever. Here is food for reflection. Here is the cause of advancing prices of beef and pork. And it is fortunate that increase in meat production is consonant with a higher and more intensive ag- riculture; that it is in fact one of the essential conditions of such improvement. And if we can act upon the suggestion of Mr. Harris in his ad- dress last evening, and perfect breeds of meat- producers that shall be able to assimilate a larger proportion of the fat-and-meat producing ele- ments contained in the food supplied, we shall hasten the adoption of a system of agriculture that shall be restorative and not exhaustive. We thus learn from statistics that grain-grow- ing exclusively, though remunerative as a tem- porary expedient, is a speculation and not true farming. Land in the prairies worth $50 per acre is bought for $5, and its true value is dis- counted in installments; i. 6. the soil is plun- dered piecemeal and converted into wheat and cash, to furnish means for fencing and house- building, and to supply capital to the pioneer farmer. In this point of view it has been remu- nerative as a pioneer expedient, but with a farm equipped for the work of a long future, the su- perior profit of a restorative system in which domestic animals fill an important part cannot be questioned, either in the deep prairies of Illi- nois or the rich bottoms of the Missouri valley. We are in a transit'on period. The influence of Western lands has modified Eastern agricult- ure, levied upon its best exemplars, discouraged the routine plodders who could not change their crops or their system, and driven the energetic to higher culture and cropping less subject to Western competition. In the future there is to be a higher price for Eastern lands, more money and labor and profit in working them, and a class of farmers who shall combine with hand-work more of head-work. In further consideration of mathematics ap- plied to our agriculture, let us briefly consider the peculiar status of THE SOUTHERN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. Statistics teach the cotton grower that an in- crease of a million bales may diminish the value of the crop by forty million dollars, [t decides in the negative the question whether ten states can get rich on a production which averages only $25 to $30 for each inhabitant in gross, and less than $5 in net profit to each. The one-idea rule is bad enough in farming ; but it matters less that one's eggs are all in one basket, than that his basket carries eggs enough to purchase bread for his family. To enrich the cotton region, the simple necessity exists for farm production of at least five times the possible income from the whole cotton crop. With industry, diversity, and a soil fertilized with brains, there is now labor enough easily to realize such a result. When tradition, routine and overseeing yield control to science, machinery and efficient labor, it will be accomplished. The energy wasted in producing twelve hundred thousand additional bales of cotton, which are not only given away, but actually diminish the value of the remain- der by $45,000,000 as in 1070, is worthy of a higher reward. Rightly directed, as in manufacturing a quantity equal to that thrown away, it would have doubled the money returns of the cotton Industry. It should be a statistical lesson of easy ap- plication, that the crop of 1875, nearly equaling that of 1860, and the largest of recent years, bears the lowest price and aggregates the small- est value of any since that date. Should the lesson not be fully learned ? let the planters pon- der a problem in proportion. If a crop of two million bales in 1865 is forty-three cents per pound, and one of four and a half millions in 1875 brings only twelve cents, what will be the price of seven million bales in 1885 ? Statistics have thoroughly exploded the idea of abject inter-independence, by which one sec- tion was to grow nothing but cotton, another corn exclusively, and a third only pumpkins and potatoes, while an army of transporters and a legion of traders should eat and drink up and wear out agricultural production in transits and so promote good fellowship and illustrate the freedom and thriftiness of trade and the long suffering of the producing Granger I The South has taken one side of this question; California the other. The South is old, Cali- fornia is young ; but the census estimates of rural earnings per man is $266 for the land of cotton, and $1042 for the land of gold. Of this $266, cotton in 1869 yielded $118 to each man en- gaged in agriculture in the Cotton States. The occidental shore was far away, beyond a high and rocky barrier, and self-possession compelled self-feeding; the large proportion of workers engaged in mining created profitable markets, and ambitious thrift demanded further produc- tion for exportation, which became a surplus for saving, not a fund to be transformed into " hog and hominy" and eaten in advance I In- stead of expected semi-starvation while flour was floating around the Horn, five times the requisite home supply can be shipped to the starving of Europe ; wines are forwarded by car loads to New York, are there slightly modi- fled to imitate the color and flavor of foreign vintages, and sold at a marvelous advance un- der European names ; and fruits and wool and other exports increase the hoard of the hus- bandman of the Pacific coast. California has imported little, except to satis- fy the lavish extravagance of the rich, and has sent much of her rural production abroad. She has sought out and utilized her resources more actively and perse veringly than any other state, and has illustrated strikingly the benefits which result from a practical union of the several productive industries. The South, on the con- trary, with every variety of soil and climate, has discouraged variety in agricultural produc- tion, neglected ores like those of Pennsylvania, coals equal to the beds of Ohio, water-power unsurpassed in New England. She has spurned the lavished gifts of God and the skill and labor of man, while courting the selfish advances of foreign trade, and hopelessly seeking riches by swapping cotton for everything spontaneously produced by nature or laboriously wrought by human skill. Had her skies been less genial, her clouds less wonderfully propitious, and her soil a little unkind, famine and bankruptcy would long since have claimed a country wed- ded to a false system of economy and rural prac- tice. There are signs that a new day is dawning; with self-dependence, home markets, more labor better directed, and profitable use found for every mineral, tree and plant, as well as every human capacity, a new El Dorado will appear to compete with the golden West I In this criticism upon so exclusive devotion to a single specialty of an industry followed to the exclusion of all others, let me not be mis- understood. Nowhere else in our country are the intelligence and culture of the couimuniry so generally employed in agriculture. No other farmers can so successfully cultivate their favorite staple. Nowhere is agricultural discussion so popular and genial. And their wisest leaders, neither few nor unappreciated, have long been teaching a similar doctrine, which has never been impeached by any, and yet has been left by each to his neighbor to practice until a very recent date. May these wise counsels hereafter receive practical as well as theoretical assent. STATISTICS OP THE CENTENNIAL. A statistical view of this great exhibition ie fullof suggestion and encouragement to farmers, directly in the wonderful progress unfolded in the variety and perfection of labor saving ag- ricultural machinery, and indirectly in the marvelous advance in other branches of indus- trial art, which furnish the home markets that make the farmer's prices in part and his profits in still larger proportion. The machines that did the work of a million farmers absent in the field of war, were not ia existence ten years before, and the past ten years have been equal- ly prolific in the multiplication and perfecting of implements of agriculture, until they have overflowed our own markets and flowed forth by cargoes to fill the markets of Europe, South America, Africa even, and the islands of the world's great ocean. Fifteen years ago this Cen- tennial display of American manufactures would have been impossible, the fine woolens, the car- pets, the cutlery, the glass and porcelain wares, having been mainly the creation of this propiti- ous period of large demand and stable legisla- tion. The benefit of this development to ag- riculture and the national welfare and credit, has been incalculable, a development that has given steady work and high wages to all indus- trial labor, and whiqh put away for full five years the day of panic and monetary depression, which was the legitimate result of over-impor- tation and reckless speculation. It has enriched the country by hundreds of millions, and has been the natural ally of agriculture, as unpro- ductive speculative occupation has been its enemy and bane. Before closing this brief line of remark, I would suggest as a preliminary to improve ments in the collection of agricultural data cer- tain STATISTICAL DESIDERATA For the perfection of statistical investiga- tion, greater accuracy and higher utility in the results, there are many pressing requirements, among which the following are prominent : 1. A higher popular appreciation of the utility of statistics, a habit of more careful obser- vation and accurate report. 2. Earnest inculcation by the press of the im- portance of systematic records of fact, and greater precision and conscientiousness in re- porting them for publication. 3. In industrial associations, greater patience and persistence in statistical effort, and more cure In avoiding erroneous judgments and im- pulsive utterances, so naturally resulting from bias of self-interest. 4. In state legislation, a wise and uniform pro- vision for the best attainable system of statis- tical collection. 6. In national legislation, higher appreciation of the great necessity and economy of early and accurate information concerning produc- tion and distribution, and a wiser and more liberal provision for the perfection of statistical methods. There is yet a small portion of the rural popu- lation refusing, through ignorance and preju- dice, to reveal the extent of their productions. In reporting original data there is frequently a hasty jumping at conclusions and carelessness of statement prejudicial to accuracy, requir- ing a cultivation of patience and the exercise of mature judgment. The organization of State Bureaus of agricultural statistics cannot be de- manded too strenuously, or persistently, and the delegates of this Congress are urged not to cease individual efforts to this end in every state hitherto recreant to its interests and duty in this regard. Scarcely more than half a dozen states are now attempting systematic and regu- lar work. In the South there is but one, Geor- gia, that has made a good beginning ; and she is appropriating for the collection of agricultural statistics a sum as large as the present Congress of United States has provided for a similar purpose for thirty-eight States and ten Terri- tories. And here let me urge a vital point. See that you elect to Congress fewer lawyers and more representatives of great industries. Elect men intelligent in practical affairs, wise in measures tending to develop the resources of the coun- try, well indoctrinated in political economy, and as representatives more interested in the pub- lic welfare than in their own. The failures of the past in legislation for statistical investigation have been lamentable. Every man of intelligence knew the absolute necessity for a radically amended law for taking the Census of 1870. Much time was spent in maturing a bill, and Gen. Garfleld and others in Congress were efficient in urging it, but the time of its discussion was mainly spent upon purely political features, such as the basis of Congressional representation, and it was aban- doned, and the old and imperfect law was re- enacted with slight alteration. Without recount- ing in detail the failures, allow me to express re- gret for the meagre dole to agricultural sta- tistics by the present Congress. For collecting statistics in forty-eight States and Territories, for clerical work in recording and compiling the same in the home office, for records of domes- tic boards of trade and of agriculture, for transcripts and translations of foreign "official reports and records of industrial organizations, for statistical statements and even special inves- tigations for committees and members of both Houses of Congress, for transcripts of official recordafer foreign governments and home so- cieties, for employment of experts in special investigations, for writing matter for monthly and annual and special reports, the sum of ten thousand dollars is appropriated, not enough to pay the one item for routine work of record and tabulation ! Without straw, without even clay, statistical brick making is thus required I And yet the annual report, a fractional part of this indicated work which is thus placed on star- vation diet, is deemed worthy of publication to the extent of three hundred thousand copies, and an appropriation of $130,000 ia made for its publication. " Such is legislative economy— "sav- ing at the spigot." It is the wisdom of a bread- maker who would save his yeast only to spoil his flour. It is a feast of cheese-parings supple- mented with a champagne supper. While $130,- 000 is for volumes for Congressional distribu- tion, and $60,000 is for seeds and plants similarly distributed, $10,000 is deemed enough for the division charged with the most onerous and important work of the Department of Agricul- ture. In addition to this stroke of economy, reduction of the Department printing fund will necessitate the stoppage of the monthly report with the November number. Better infinitely than such crippling and dwarfing of the work of investigation required by the organic act creating the Department, to cut off all appro- priations except for seeds and plants and run the institution exclusively as a seed store, or else abolish it altogether. Yet we ought to expect in this day of progress, legislative action for the public weal and national improvement, on a high plane for the public good alone, increase of national production, advancement of intelli- gence and skill, and enhancement of general comfort and happiness. In conclusion allow me to express the hope that the "Agricultural Congress" may be prominently instrumental, in the present and in the future, in stimulating a desire for practi- cal knowledge among the rural population, in disseminating wise views of agricultural meth- ods and systems, and in increasing the wealth Mid happiness of its great constituency. AGRICULTURAL REFORM. By THOS. P. JANES, M. D. Mr. President and Members of the National Agricultural Congress:— I have been at a loss to know why your President invited me to address you, unless acting on the idea that " necessity is the mother of invention," he hoped that I might be the bearer of some novel thoughts, the off- spring of the necessitous, struggling condition of my people. If this was his expectation, I fear he must content himself with disappointment. It is true that we have for the last decade strug- gled up from the ashes of despair through the most adverse circumstances. The land-owners of the South were left in 1865 as the captain of a vessel after a storm in mid-sea, without rudder or compass, with even his sailors overboard, and his supplies exhausted. By a single stroke of the Executive pen two- thirds of the entire taxable property of the South was destroyed, and the productive power of the remainder seriously impaired. In Georgia alone, the taxable property was re- duced $500,000,000 in forty-eight hours. These facts are mentioned in no spirit of complaint or reproach, but simply as a matter of history to illustrate our condition at the beginning of the last decade, and to show that we have been "practicing" for ten years what I propose to "preach" to-day. I invite your attention to a few thoughts and suggestions on the subject of AGRICULTURAL REFORM. I will discuss it under the three leading heads: Individual, State and National. As the aggregation of individual citizens con- stitutes a state politically, so the aggregation of the accumulations of individual wealth consti- tutes the material body politic of the state. Without a pure, conservative, patriotic citi zenship, good government is impossible. Without economy, system, and industry in the individual, state or national prosperity is equally impossible. In a government like ours the material pros- perity and resulting contentment of the individ- ual is indispensable not only to the advancement of the state in material wealth and greatness, but to her political, moral and religious purity. The material prosperity of the individual being the corner-stone of national greatness, his ad- vancement morally, intellectually and materially becomes a question of vital moment, and should command the most careful attention of the statesman and patriot. The agricultural portion of every community constitutes its most conservative element be- cause of their attachment to the soil, their isola- tion and consequent removal from the corrupt- ing influences of trade, and the ennobling influ- ence of their constant association with the de- 26 vrelopments ot God's will expressed in the works of nature. It is from this usually conservative, contented class, principally, that we hear now the cry of reform. Why is this ? Is it due solely to maladministra- tion and corruption in official circles ? Is it due to defects in the financial system of the country? Is it due to the failure of the general govern- ment to afford by internal improvements proper facilities for the cheap transportation of the products of the farm and the mine to market ; or is it due to a failure of individuals to realize changes of circumstances which necessitate changes of policy and practice which have not been made, because of a reckless speculative spirit engendered by the extreme fluctuations of values resulting from the late civil war? It is due, perhaps, in part to each one of these causes, but mainly to misdirected individual enterprise, speculative farming, and a ruinous credit system. We are prone to look abroad for faults and errors rather than to ourselves. It is useless to deny the fact that a general want of thrift and consequent depression per- vade the tillers of the soil in our country. They are not accumulating money— the balance is too often on the wrong side of the sheet at the end ot the year's labor. A scarcity of money is felt even in the centres of trade. Its cause is dis- cussed in the club, the Grange and on the street corner. Its discussion has even invaded the halls of the National Congress. Large leaks have been discovered in high official quarters; reckless expenditures of the peoples' money have doubtless been made. The fostering care of national and state goverments has not been sufficiently devoted to the two nursing breasts of the nation's wealth, agriculture and mining. There should be reform in all of these respects —these large leaks should be stopped, but that will not remedy the evils which surround us. The leaks on the farm must be stopped before there can be any substantial prosperity for in- dividual, state or nation. The farm must be made more than self-sustaining— the balance of trade must be in its favor. To accomplish this, brains must control mus- cle, and machinery be substituted for the latter whenever practicable. Restless, speculative farming must be abandoned for a more conser- vative, frugal and cautious system conducted upon a solid cash basis. Credit and high rates of interest have been and are still the bane of Southern agriculture. Left in 1865 with nothing but his land, the plant- er was compelled to resort to the disastrous ex- pedient of borrowing money at extortionate rates of interest to defray the current expenses of the farm. To meet the demands of his cred- tors he devoted his attention to the production of cotton as the most marketable product to the neglect of supply crops. This necessitated a repetition of the same system year after year, which, with wasteful, unreliable and uncontrol- able labor has been extremely difficult to discard. Indeed, as long as our chief staple sold as high as twenty cents per pound, some money was made even under this unnatural system. As cotton fell in price, the fallacy of the system of purchasing supplies with which to make it, be- came more and more apparent, and individuals began to search more diligently for the " leaks on the farm." The true magnitude of the leaks were not fully realized until they were aggregated by the Geor- gia State Department of Agriculture, which commenced its investigations during the fall of 1874.. Taking Georgia as a representative of the Cot- ton states, the facts developed there demon- strate the necessity of reform in that entire section. From statistics collected in Georgia we find that labor is forty per cent, less efficient than it was fifteen years ago— that the average farm laborers devote only 4.7 days of each week to their crops. This is substantiated by the facts of cotton production since that period; notwith- standing the natural increase in the laboring population, and the extension of the cotton area by the more extended use of commercial fertili- zers, no more cotton is produced now than was produced fifteen years ago. From partial railroad statistics collected last year, it is estimated that the farmers of Georgia purchased on a cash basis $39,434,013 worth of farm supplies, exclusive of live stock, sugar, coffee and dry goods from April 1st, 1874 to the same date in 1875. They paid in interest on the supplies which they purchased, four and a quarter millions of dollars. They wasted in one year, 1875, by the injudicious purchase and use of fertilizers, $2,- 176,998, by paying from fifty to seventy dollars per ton for commercial fertilizers to be used alone ; when an expenditure of ten dollars for material necessary to make a ton of compost, using home manures in combination with acid phosphates would produce better results in pro- duction of crops. That is fully attested by the results of practical experiment and chemical analysis. They have bought corn and oats at more than twice the cost of raising them at home. They have bought horses and mules at twice the cost of raising them. All of these were bought for what? Why to make cotton which brings on the market what it cost to produce it. Was not reform necessary here, and was not the individual farm the place to apply it? Never in the history of any agricultural people has re - form been more earnestly and vigorously applied than by the farmers of Georgia to-day. The leaks on the farm have been pointed out to them and they are vigorously applying the remedies. They are using every available means of making their farms self-sustaining. They are cultivating less area in cotton, but improving the prepara- tion and cultivation of the soil and cheapening fertilization. They have nearly doubled the oat crop, and largely increased the area in corn. They are giving more attention to the produc- tion of clover, lucerne, the grasses and other for- age crops, and are devoting more attention to raising stock. In no state in the Union have farmers advanced more rapidly in a knowledge of the true principles of soil culture and fertili- zation than have those of Georgia within the last few years. Nowhere are they learning more rapidly the application of science to agriculture. Nowhere are they more determined to use wise- ly the advantantages of soil and climate which the God of Nature has so bountifully bestowed upon them. Other Cotton States are not moving so rapidly because they have not used the same instru- mentalities for collecting and disseminating in- formation among their farmers ; but they will soon wheel into line and make cotton a surplus crop, the proceeds of which may be devoted to practical development and productive enter- prise. The South must produce her supplies without diminishing her cotton crop, leaving the surplus grain of the West to swell our exports till com- bined with our shipments of cotton and tobacco, we shall regain our foreign commerce, turn the balance of trade in our favor, stop the exporta- tion of gold from our ports, and turning the tide again in this direction bring prosperity and con- tentment to all classes of our. people. . Until cheaper transportation can be afforded, more of the corn of the Northwest must be put into the more compact form of meat, and the unlimited water power of the South must, as it inevitably will in a quarter of a century, be util- 27 ized to convert our raw material into yarns and thus double the value, and hence contribute double the amount towards re-establishing the balance of trade in our favor. There is water power enough in Georgia alone to manufacture all of the cotton and wool pro- duced in the U. S. The f ollowing are some of the most important, reported by Dr. Geo. Little, State Geologist: The Chattahooche river falls 106 feet in 3 miles and gives at Columbus, 30,000 horse power, of which only 850 are used. One of its tributaries, Mulberry creek, affords 387 H. P. The Savannah river furnishes the canal at Augusta with 12,000 H. P. One of its tributaries, Briar Creek, gives 515 H. P. The Oconee, with its tributaries in Clarke Co,, near Athens, gives over 3,000 H. P. The Ocmulgee between the Georgia Railroad and the city of Macon, a distance of fifty miles, affords 36,000 H. P.; and its tributary, Yellow river, 7,000 H. P. The Coosawathe, a tributary of the Coosa river, at one point in Gordon county, gives nearly 2,500 Eight streams furnish at their principal falls, 91,302 H. P., of which but little is used, leaving nearly the whole of this vast power to run riot to the sea, murmuring, as it goes, at man's ne- glectful waste of Nature's forces. Georgia spins but little more than ten per cent of her cotton. She loses annually $25,000,000 by not spinning the whole. The Cotton States would receive $250,000,000 more for their crop if it was sold as yarn, than they do by selling the raw material. We of the South are far behind our Northern and Western brethren in the introduction of labor-saving implements and machinery, and consequently all more dependent upon expen- sive and unreliable human muscle for our farm labor. The difficulties of the Western farmers rest more in the lack of cheap transportation to the sea than in misapplied energy and misdirec- ted labor. They have diversified their farming to the full extent admissible iu their climate. Not so in the South. With a soil and climate susceptible of almost endless diversity of cult- ure and products, her farmers have relied main- ly upon one market product, which in conse- quence of a failure to produce provision crops, is sold without nett profit. Georgia and Indiana have nearly the same population. Let us compare their material wealth and see what are the principal items of difference in the wealth ot the two states. Geor- gia had in farms in 1870, 23,647,941 acres. Indiana had 18,120,648 acres. Georgia had on these farms only 6,831,856 acres improved, while Indiana had 10,104,270 improved. The Georgia farms were worth in cash $94,559,468 ; while those of Indiana were worth $634,804,189. The crops produced in Georgia were worth $80,390,328 ; in Indiana, $122,- 914,302. Hence, on the capital invested in real estate in Georgia, the agricultural products amounted to eigJity-nve per cent., while Indiana made only nineteen per cent, on her capital in- vested in farms. So it appears, Mr. President, that considering only the value of the land an investment in Georgia farms pays more than four times the profit of the same amount in- vested in the famous lands of Indiana. Indiana had iu 1870, $52,052,425 invested in man- ufactures which produced new values amount- in,; to $108,617,728, or $2,08 for one dollar in- vested. Georgia had in 1870 au investment of $13,930,125, which produced $31,196,115, or $2,24 to one invested. In view of these facts, why is the average Indiana farmer to-day in a better finan- cial condition than the same class in Georgia? The same source from which we get the basis of the above facts, U. S. Census, 1870, wili to sornd extent explain the fact. ) Indiana by an investment of $13,061,890 in labor saving farm machinery, which is to some extent a permanent investment, expends in producing her $122,914.302 worth of agricultural products, $10.11 1,738 less for labor than Georgia does to produce her $80.390.228 worth. In other words, Indiana pavs only eight per cent, of the value of her agricultural products in wages, while Geor- gia spends twenty-five per cent, of hers in wages. Again, Indiana diversifies her products and de- votes proper attention to raising stock of all kinds, so that the farmer has nothing to buy ex- cept bis sugar, coffee, salt and dry goods. While in Georgia the planter too often depends upon his cotton to buy meat and bread as well as to defray all other expenses of the farm. In every instance the cotton planter who raises his sup- plies and stock on bis farm, is prospering. That is the key to the whole matter.. Make the farm produce firxt its own supplies, and after that as large a surplus as is possible for war/ret. Much can be done towards accomplishing re- form in individual practice by wise, j udicious and just state action. In this respect we need STATE REFORM. In order to reach a just understanding of this question, let us consider for a moment what is a state ? It is a political body governed by repre- sentatives; a commonwealth. Under our system the people rule directly through their represen- tatives chosen from small communities and sup- posed to represent the wishes and interests of the voters and tax-payers. In a commonwealth therefore, in which a large majority of the prop- erty owners are engaged in the fundamental food-producing occupation of tilling the soil, it is highly proper for that commonwealth to em- ploy the machinery of its state government to promote this great fundamental interest upon which every business of life depends, directly or indirectly. If the tax payers by the investment of a very small amount in a State Department of Agriculture as a medium of communication between the different sections and individuals for the collection and dissemination of informa- tion, can realize a large saving in their annual expenditures or an increase in their productive power, then the investment is both wise and profitable. In what way can the people of a state more wisely direct the energies of their government than in promoting the intelligence and wealth of the citizens. Instead of wasting the peoples' money in the discussion of questions purely political, on the passage of laws, local in their application, and in perpetual tinkering at the Code, let our statesmen study thoroughly the sources of material wealth of the state, the ob- stacles in the way of their development and the means Of increasing the prosperity of the citi- zen. Let them look more to the means of pre- venting crime than to the enactment of laws for its punishment. Let them, by wise and just legislation, so encourage the productive forces of the state, that peace and plenty shall sur- round the citizens and there will be little need of criminal codes. ^ There is much that the producers of a com- monwealth can accomplish through the agencies of government which can neither be reached by individual enterprise or by the organized effort of f oluntary associations. There must be the prestige of official authori- ty, there must be the feeling of propriety-right on the part of the citizen which each experi- ences towards the state government which he aids in supporting, on which he feels at liberty to call for information, and to which he de- lights to contribute the results of his observa- tion and experience. At the annual expense of one cent to each inhabitant, Georgia has estab- lished a Department of Agriculture which has been annually worth to the commonwealth more than two dollars to each ii habitant, though it has been in operation only two years. r You may naturally ask "how has this been done?" The farmers of Georgia purchased during the last season 56.596 tons of fertilizers. Under the law, the Commission of Agriculture has especial charge of the inspection aud analysis of fertili- zers, and is authorized to forbid the sale of such articles as do not contain a reasonable amount of plant food. All worthless brands are there- lore entirely excluded from the Georgia mar- ket. The analysis of all others are published for the information of farmers, as well as the com- mercial value and selling price of each brand. Five hundred pounds of each brand are requir- ed for soil tests which are now being conducted under the direction of the commission by one hundred and ten practical farmers in all sec- tions of the state. As the result of this system of inspection aud analysis the farmers are not only protected from the impositions which were before practiced upon them, but as a result of the contrast of the chemical composition and commercial values of the various brands, he secures his fertilizers nearly twenty-four per cent, cheaper this year than last. Again, by scientific experimental investigation it has been found that the farmer can save seventy-five per cent, of his former outlay for fertilizers by com- posting home material with acid phosphate. This information has been disseminated through the publication of the State Department of Agriculture 'till nearly half the farmers in the state have adopted the compost system by which a million dollars are annually saved in the state. The increase in the oat crop of the state as the result of information as to varieties and time of sowing, is worth half a million dollars to the state this year. Statistics have been col- lected which show the errors of the past and point out remedies to be used in future. Stock- raising is being encouraged by the preparation and publication of manuals for the use of farm- ers. A Hand-book of the state has been prepared for the purpose of making known the resources of the state— her advantages of soil and climate, and other facts for the information of intelli- gent capitalists in other sections of our own country, as well as those of the old world. These are some of the results of the first two years' labor of this department which has only reached the threshold of its usefulness and profit to the state. With the aid of the state geologist, Dr. George Little, of whose work I wish to speak present- ly, samples of more than forty beds of marl have been analyzed and a manual of its use is being prepared for the instruction of the farm- ers. At an annual cost of one cent to the inhabi- tant, a geological survey of Georgia, conducted by Dr. George Little, shows unlimited mineral wealth-embracing 175 square miles of coal— iron ore of the best quality and almost without limit— copper ore in abundance and of the best quality— immense quantities of iron pyrites very pure, from which unlimitable quantities of sulphuric acid, which we need to render bone phosphate soluble, may be manufactured— vast beds of white, red and black marble— a bed of excellent roofing slate, 100 feet thick— a solid mountain of granite, seven miles in circumfer- ence and 700 ft. high— lime and marl in inex- haustible supply— manganese, Baryton &c.— with as much gold as there is in California. It will be seen then, Mr. President, that as in- dividuals and a state we are attempting reform. The state of Georgia has established an official head for the advancement of her agricultural interests. She is havmg her water power measured and her mineral deposits examined by a skillful geologist for the information of manu- facturing and mining capitalists. She asks the co-operation of her sister states in her efforts at reform and progress in all that pertains to the elevation of her citizens in intelligence, prosperity and happiness. She has invoked the aid of science in its application to the develop- ment of her material resources, aut better, books, papers and pictures. In short, owing to the discoveries of science, to increased skill, and to mechanical and chemi- cal inventions, a given amount of labor will pro- duce more of the necessaries and luxuries of Mfe which a farmer needs to procure in ex- change tor his farm products than it would 25, 50 or 100 years ago. So far as material prosperity is concerned, therefore, we are, as a naiion, or a community of nations, better off than we were 25, 50, or 100 years ago. We need not work so hard, or, if we •work as hard, we can have more of the neces- saries and luxuries of life. I am speaking now of all classes. But, of course, it does not nece sarily follow that one class in exchanging its products for the products of another class gets, at all times, a fair and just equivalent. And no acts ot legis- lation will make a man just and liberal. It a barber in Kansas refuses to shave a farmer for less than two bushels of corn, the farmer can let his beard grow. And if a shoemaker wants 60 bushels of potatoes for a pair of boots the farmer may have to submit to the exchange. But such a state of things in a free and intelli- gent community will not last long. The farm- er or his son, will turn shoemaker, and by and by the shoemaker will want to turn farmer. This matter of the exchange of labor or its products must be left to regulate itself. Mo- nopoly, extortion, and all forms of injustice seldom prosper iu the end. To me, the prospects of American agriculture never were so bright as at the present time. There is plenty of work to be done. The great- €8t curse that can befall a man or nation is vol- untary or involuntary idleness. " Nothing t» do" means poverty and misery. The less a man does the less he is inclined to do. The more he does the more he can do. Idleness leads to weakness and inability. Work gives strength and skill, it banishes despondency and brings in hope, and hope leads to continued effort. If we fa>l one year we try again. We get to have faith in the soil and in ourselves. We have to compete with our brother farmers and with the farmers of the world. We feel that farming is no child's play and we must try to acquit our- selves like men and be strong. Of our many blessings, therefore, not the least is the fact that we have now, and shall have for years to come, plenty of work to do on our farms. There are farmers w^ho thought that when their farms were cleared of the forest, and when the barns and fences were built and roads made, there would be little to do. Phil- osophers also told us, and truly, that trees ab- sorbed carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and that when we cleared up a district we not only removed these natural purifiers of the atmos- phere, but when the trees were burnt or de- cayed large quantities of carbonic acid were thrown off, and al-o that man and beast were daily and hourly polluting the atmosphere in the sam^ way. All the processes and operations of civilized life produced enormous quantities of carbonic acid, and we at the same time were re- moving the trees which nature had provided to purity the atmosphere. Now all this was true enough, but the great fact was not then known, that an acre of corn would take up probably five times as much carbonic acid as an acre of forest trees, and that wheat, barley, oats, grass and clover, and all our cultivated plants were much more efficient purifiers of the atmosphere than the native forests. The fear that this con- tinent would become a black hole of Calcutta has proved groundless ; and so the idea, that when we have done the pioneer work of agri- culture there will be little to do; is equally erroneus. The better we farm, the farther we advance ; the more improvements we make, the more work will there be to do. Let us be thank- lul. On my own farm I have little or no wood to chop in winter, and yet I find no difficulty in keeping nearly as many men at work in the winter and spring months as during the month of harvest. In fact, wages being much less, I employ more men in the spring than during the summer. Few farmers, 25 or 50 years ago, could have anticipated such a result. The truth is there is scarcely any limit to the amount of work to be done on the farm. The more we do the more there is to be done. Work makes work. And as a rule our profits come not from land but from labor. When the duties were taken off foreign grain the English farmers thought their occupation was gone. They thought it was impossible for them to compete with the owners ef cheap land. They really believed that there was, land so rich that in the language of Douglas Jerroldit " needed only to be tickled with a hoe to make it Jaugh with a harvest." Experience has prov- ed their fears groundless. It will be so in this country. Many of us who reside in the older settled states, think we cannot compete with the cheap rich lauds of the West. And no doubt this competition demands our best thoughts, and will tax our skill and energy. We may have to make many and frequent changes in our rotations and general management. But we need not despair. We shall be able to make a livinsf . There is no paradise on earth. "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." There will be found advantages and disadvantages in all sections. More depends on the man than on the situation. I read a remark a few weeks ago in one o< our leading papers that, owing to the enormous | amount of land io this country, it would be 250 years before there was any real necessity for scientific agriculture. The writer evidently at- tached some technical and definite meaning to the phrase "scientific agriculture." The truth is, however, that what would be scientific farm- ing in England, might not be scientific farming in America; what would be scientific farming in New England or New York might not be sci- entific farming in Kansas or California. He is the scientific farmer who makes the most of his labor and capital. And there'is just as much necessity for scientific farming to-day as there will be 250 years hence. And true scientific farming will be just as profitable at the present time as it ever has been in the past or ever will be in the future. I greatly mistake the signs of the times if, in the near future, we shall not find as many, and as true scientific farmers in America as are to be found anywhere in the world. Take up an English agricultural paper and, no matter what subject is under discussion, you will not read far before allusion will be made to the question of "Tenant Rights." A farmer's club cannot discuss the science and practice of feeding stock without getting excited over the mult-tax. "If we could feed malt," they say, we could then raise cheap beef and mutton. If we could get compensation for our unexhausted improvements we could employ our skill and capital to advantage. We are not without our troubles here. We have some burdens that are bard to bear. But, at any rate, we are our own land owners. Any improvements we make are made on our own land. Our land is not entailed. We can transfer it as easily as any other proper- ty. We sometimes grumble because our best farm laborers so soon leave us. They want farms of their own. I have a man who has wor ned for me 12 years, and who has now, out of feis savings, bought a nice farm of his own. I lose a good man, but he will work quite as hard lor himself as he did for me and put more thought, care and skill into his labor. It may be a lp>s to me but it is a gain to the country. He will be able to earn more money and will have more to spend. American farmers, as a class, work harder than any other farmers in the world. We oc- casionally find a drone in the hive, but on the whole, we are a nation of workers, and it makes a great difference whether a man is working for himself or tor others. We all know what a dif- ference it makes in the amount of work done whether a man is working by the day or by the piece. Last autumn I had men diguring pota- toes by the day, I paid them $1.25 per day. Digging, picking up and pitting, cost me over 6 cents a bushel. I then told two of the men I would give them 5 cents a bushel to do the work. They took the job, and these two men dug and pitted 100 bushels every day and then went home, they sometimes got through by 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I got the work done cheaper and the men earned double the money. Now just think what this means; these men were earning $1.25 per day. If we assume that it cost them $1.00 per day for family expenses, they made 25 cents a d ay. Now with a little more energy, care and skill they earned $2.50 per day and, instead of making 25 cents over and above expenses, they made $1.50 or six times as much. In other words, they really made as much money in one day as they were previously making in a week. 1 mention this merely to illustrate ray idea in regard to the great advantage it is to us as a nation to have such a large proportion of those engaged in agricultural pursuits directly inter- ested in the results of their labors. They are the owners and occupiers and workers of the land. Self-interest calls out all their energy and skill. They make every stroke tell. A na- tion of such farmers ought to be a rich nation. The American agriculture of thef uture will not be English agriculture or European or Chinese agriculture, it will be American agriculture. We shall think for ourselves. One ot the oldest and most successful farmers in the state of New York is a Scotchman. But he does not use Scotch plows or adopt the Scotch system of ro- tation. He uses his Scotch knowledge and ex- perience. But his farming is essentially Ameri- can. We have many good English farmers among us but we have no English farming. We have to think for ourselves ; we have to study principles and apply them. Liebig has more readers here than in Germany. The results of Dawes and Gilbert's experiments at Rothamstead are more carefuly studied in this country than in England. And there is a reason for this. The English farmer can apply Lawe's superphosphate to his turnip crop with- out studying Lawes and Gilbert's account of their 30 years' experiments. But here if we would get any benefit from these wonderful in- vestigations we must study them and master the principles of agricultural science. This we are to some extent doing. The large circulation of our numerous agricultural pa- pers proves that American farmers are great readers as well as great workers. They do not spend their evenings at the village tavern. Their houses may be isolated, but they are the homes of much that is noble and true. We need have no fears in regard to the rising gene- ration of American farmers. " But are not your sons leaving the farm?" Certainly, and do not English farmers' sons leave the farm? The sons and daughters of Queen Victoria cannot all be kings and queens, and the sons and daughters of farmers cannot, all be farmers and farmer's wives. I do not object to young men leaving the farm for the cities, nor to successful business men turning farmers. We need more of the latter class in the coun- try. But what of the active, enterprising, well- educated young man who sticks to the farm or who adopts agriculture as the business of his life ; what are his prospects ? The farmer's son who leaves the farm and turns carpenter, brick- layer or mason may become a builder and con- tractor and the owner of a dozen block s the quarterly rent from any one of which would buy his father's or bis brother's farm. Another farmer's son turns blacksmith, and having learned to make nails and horse-shoes by hand thinks he can make them by machinery, and becomes a millionaire. Another is a shoe- maker but does not stick solely to his last. He becomes, after a few years, the President of one of the largest boot & shoe manufacturing com- panies in the world. Another studies law and becomes an O'Connor or an Evarts. But I need not go through the list. We all know, and the young men on the farm, know, that there are great prizes to be won in the learned professions and in trade, commerce and manufactures. And they will try for them and work for them, and I do not object to it. and if I did it would make no sort of difference. A busi- ness in which there are no prizes, will have lib- tie attraction for a young man full of hope and energy. Are there any prizes to be won in the field of agriculture, and, if so, how shall we go to work in order to get them ? Farming is said to be a slow business, but sure. The man who cannot work and wait will not succeed. But the agriculture of to-day or of the future is very different from the agricul- ture of the past. The improvement in agricultural implements and machines is something wonderful. We can 44 hardly realize the advantages which the men of science, inventors and manufacturers, have be- stowed on agriculture. Many of the operations j of agriculture are dependent on the weather. A large factory making shingles goes on, no matter what the weather may be, but a single shower will stop a whole field of hay makers. Twenty-five or thirty years ago a farmer witt a hundred acres of hay to cut and a hundred acres of grain had to hire extra men for a month or six weeks, paying extra wages and convert- ing his home into a large boarding house. And he could not cut all his grass and gram just at the right time. But now how is it? We start a couple of mowing machines in the afternoon ; ted the grass the next morning : rake it into windrows ; ted it again once or twice, if need be, in the windrows; putitinto good cocks and it is safe. We can draw it in the next day, or as soon as we can get at it. In my own case this vear though the weather was unusually catching, we were all through haying and har- vesting by the last week in July, the gram all thrashed and safe in the barn ready for market. We have a bad climate for a poor farmer who gets behind-hand with his work. But we have as good a climate as any to be found in the world if we know how to take advantage of it. I thrash my grain in the field by steam. I find that we can get in a field of grain much more expeditiously than if we put it in a stack or barn, simply because the man on the wagon can throw the grain to the machine easier than he can throw it up on a stack or bay. And when we are through we are through ; the straw stack built, the grain in the barn, and men and horses ready to fight the weeds during our splen- did August and September weather, when even quack grass is not difficult to kill. This i's what machinery has done for us. And it has done much more ; but it is not necessary to allude to it. Machinery makes us far less dependent on the weather than formerly and better farming also helps us in the same direc- tion. When I first went to Rothamstead Mr. Lawes asked me about my father's farm, the character of the soil, the rotation and yield per acre. " It is rather light land," I said, " but yields good crops, if the season is not too dry. "I suspect," said Mr. Lawes, "that your fath- er is not a very good farmer. There is nothing which a good farmer dreads so much as a wet This was a new idea to me. I have an En- glish foreman, and our climate is a sore trouble to him. From May till November, he is always wanting rain. " The mangles are growing sur- prisingly," he said, some weeks since, but another shower of rain would help them. "Perhaps so," I replied ; "but as we cannot get rain when we want it, let us keep the cultiva- tors going and kill the weeds." For my part, I like our climate. But it makes no sort of difference whether we like it or not. We cannot change it. What we need to do is to study the climate and adapt our crops and our methods of cultivation and manuring to it. One thing may be safely said, that at least three- fourths of our seasons are very bad seasons lor bad farmers, but good seasons for good farmers. Take the barley crops as an illustration. In Western New York 20 bushels per acre, weigh- ing 48 Ibs. per bushel, is a good average. It probably will not average more than this the present year. And yet we have had rather an unusually favorable season ; so favorable in- deed, that the maltsters expect to get barley at a low figure, say 75 cents per bushel. Now I feel safe in saying that on well-drained, well-prepared and properly enriched soil our climate is capable ot giving us an average yield of 40 bushels of barley per acre ; and 1 thm& the average price of six-rowed barley is fully $1 per bushel. I have said that 20 bushels is a fair average crop ; and this is taking good and bad crops to- gether. There are many crops which yield 30 bushels, and consequently there must be many that are n®t over 10 bushels. But we will take 15 bushels as the average crop of a rather indif- ferent farmer. He sows two bushels, and will be very apt to leave two bushels on the ground in harvesting the crop, and so, after deducting seed and scatterings in harvesting, he has 11 bushels to sell, which, at 75 cents is $8.25 per acre. The good farmer has 40 bushels. He sows two bushels, and we will reckon that he loses two bushels of scatterings, though a good crop does not scatter half as much as a poor crop. This leaves 36 bushels, which, at 75c is $27 per acre, or over three times as much as from the poor crop ; and this, mark you, is in a good season. Now, how is it in what we call a bad season, that is, in a season unfavorable for the growth of barley on ordinary land? In such a season we have hundreds ot farmers whose barley crops will not be over 12 bushels per acre. Deducting, as before, 2 bushels for seed and two bushels for scatterings, we have 8 brshels of merchantable barley, of rather an inferior quality, weighing perhaps, 46 Ibs. to the bushel. Owing to the unfavorable season, barley will be likely to bring $1.50 per bushel. The net re- turns from such a crop, therefore, will be (8 bushels of 46 Ibs. at $1.50 per bushel of 48 Ibs. $11.50) $11.50. The good farmer, on well-drained, well-pre- pared and properly enriched land, will have, say 36 bushels per acre of 48 Ibs. per bushel. De- ducting 2 bushels for seed and 2 bushels for scatterings we have for sale 32 bushels at $1.50 per bushel, or $48 per acre. In the case of potatoes the advantage of rais- ing a good crop in an unfavorable season is even still more striking. And since the advent of the Colorado beetle, rich land and better cultiva- tion are absolutely essential, for the reason that it costs no more to kill the " bugs " on a crop that will yield 250 bushels per acre than on a crop that will yield only 100. 1 live in a great potato-growing section. One hundred bushels per acre is a fair average crop. Last year (1875) the season was remarkably fa- vorable for the growth of potatoes in nearly all sections of the country, and millions of bushels were sold for less than it had cost to dig and market them. In my neighborhood, I have seen many pits of potatoes that were left in the field to rot. The year before we got $1.00 per bushel for potatoes, and it need not surprise any one if they are $1.00 per bushel again before next spring. Such a season as this is the good potato grower's opportunity. With potatoes at $1.00 a bushel, a good farmer can make money, and make enough to more than compensate for the loss he suffers from low prices in seasons when the average farmer has a fair crop. But I must not dwell on this point. The truth of the matter is this. With our large area, a fair average crop, such as we have in a highly favorable season, means low prices and small profits. A poor, general crop means high prices for everything we consume at home, such as beans, potatoes, barley, oats, buckwheat. &c. A poor crop of wheat and corn does not always result in high prices, for the reason that we export largely, and the price is dependent on the price in Eng- land and on the cost of transportation. As a rule, we should aim to produce those articles which we import, rather than those which we export. A short crop of barley, beans or pota- toes always gives us good prices. But such is not the case, with wheat and corn unless the failure is so general and so severe as to entirely stop exportation. When the price of these arti- 45 cles is determined by the price at which it can be delivered in our markets from foreign coun- tries, rather than by what it is worth to export to foreign markets, the American farmer is sure of getting full compensation for his labor. And in this connection let me say that it seems strat ge that we have so long let the foreign seed-grow- ers s ipply us with such a large proportion of the vast aggregate amount of field, vegetable and flower seeds which we annually use in this coun- try. Depend upon it, in the near future we shall grow our own seeds. As 1 have said before, the agricultural outlook in America is an inviting and prosperous one. There is plenty of work to be done. We own our own farms. We are surrounded by an active, energetic and intelligent business, commercial, and manufacturing people. And our own pros- perity will be in proportion to the energy, skill and intelligence we put into our work. We shall not confine ourselves to raising wheat and corn, pork and beef. Many will do this. But others will raise products which require more capital and skill, and afford larger profits. Our first object must be to make our farms cleaner and richer. Draining when necessary, and thorough cultivation, especially on the heavier soils, are the first steps. The real source of fertilizing matter is the soil. Draining nnd cultivation render a portion of the plant-food, which lies dormant in the soil, available. Mr. Lawes has raised 15 bushels of wheat every year, for over thirty years, without manure, the grain and straw being all removed. In other words, on his heavy lands, cultivation renders enough plant-food available every year for 15 bushels of wheat and straw. This is the normal yield of his soil. On lighter and poorer soils, the normal, annual supply of plant-food would not be so much, and on richer alluvial soils it is often much greater. But whatever the exact amount, it is evident that this annual supply is the real manurial income of the farm. Our object must be to use this annual income to the best advan- tage. If we sell all our crops we live up to our income, and the larm gets no richer. And if we lose any by leaching or evaporation the soil be- comes to that extent poorer. If we retain half the crop at home on the farm, and use it judic- iously, we add so much to our manurial capital. Many of our farmers sow land to wheat and seed it down with clover. They then plow under the clover and saw wheat again. In this way they raise a crop of wheat every other year, and, theoretically, it the normal yield, or the annual supply of plant-food, is equal to 15 bushels of wheat per acre, the yield, iu such a case, every other year should be 30 bushels per acre. You get no more wheat iu one case than iu the other, and the only advantage is the saving in seed and in the labor of preparing for and harvesting the crop. I admit that these are very great advan- tages. Summer fallowing on some soils would have equal advantages. But I have not time tc dwell on this part of the subject. I have said that theoretically, if the normal yield of a soil is 15 bushels per acre, if we plow under a year's growth of clover we ought to get 30 bushels, be- cause we have two year's supply of plant-food in the soil. There is a principle, however, which interferes with this result. The soil is very con- servative. It is not easy to get out of it all. we put into it. A dressing of farm-yard manure or a crop of clover plowed under, is not by any means taken up by the growing plants in a sin- pie season. In heavy soils, especially, decompo sition proceeds very slowly, and it may be sev era! years before all the plant-food supplied bj a crop of clover is given up to the plants. Stii the laot remains tuat when we plow under a year's growth of clover we have accumulated in the soil an extra quantity of plant-food equal ti the annual supply rendered available by the rocesses of agriculture and the decomposing nd disintegrating action of sun and air, heat nd cold. And it i* this fact that lies at the basis f all judicious rotations of crops. I cannot but eel that we are on the eve of many important liscoveries which will enable us to add greatly 0 the yield of our crops and the profits of our arming. We have learned how to make a sheep produce as much mutton from one year's feed, as was btained from three or four year's feed less than a century ago. We shall learn how to get out f our farm-yard manure all, or nearly all, its aluable plant-food in a single year, if we so wish, and consequently be able to raise a much arger crop. We shall have the matter more under control. We plow under a crop of clover for wheat, and n this way get two year's supply of plant-food for the wheat. We ought to double our crop of wheat. We ought to get as much wheat from the one crop every other year as from two crops of wheat grown successively on the same land. The advantage of the plan, as I have said, is in saving the seed for one crop and the labor of putting in the crop and cutting it. But I feel sure that growing a crop and plow- ng it under, merely to enrich another crop, ia not always the most economical plan. It is good as far as it goes. It is far better than growing grain crops year after year on the same land, But there is a better way. There is much nu- triment in the clover, and this nutriment can be taken from the clover and still leave nearly all the elements of plant-food in the excrements of the animals that have eaten the clover. And what is true of clover is true of all other food. Bran is sometimes used for manure, and so are malt-roots, and a few years ago some of the Connecticut tobacco-growers used corn meal as manure. Now if a sheep only takes out from 5 to 10 per cent, of nitrogen, and a still less pro- portion of phosphoric acid, potash and other valuable elements of manure from the food, and if these elements are left in a more available condition in the manure than in the food itself, 1 think we shall be able to make a profit in feed- ing the clover and other food to sheep, rather than to plow it under merely for manure. I am well aware that when we feed a ton of clover, containing 100 Ibs. of nitrogen, to sheep, we do not always get back 90 to 95 Ibs. of nitrogen in the manure. A careless farmer might lose halt the value of the manure by leaching. But there is no necessity for this. The elements are in the manure when it leaves the animal, and we shall learn how to preserve them, and I feel sure we shall soon learn how to make them more imme- diately available to our crops. How to get out of our soil more of the large amount of dormant elements of plant-food which it contains, and then when we have got these elements, how best to use them and save them should be the great aim of scientific and practical agriculturists. I know of no better plan than the one I have sug- gested :— 1st. Draining and thorough cultivation. These operations, by letting in the air and sun, decom- pose and disintegrate the organic and iuorganio elements of plant-food. 2d. To grow such crops as will take up the lar- gest proportion of this plant-food from the soil and subsoil. Clover, on many soils, is one of the best plants for this purpose. Peas and beans, in favorable latitudes, are also good. Grass and oats are less valuable for the purpose, but still useful, and our grand, national cereal, Indian corn, can be used with immense advantage. But we have much to learn in regard to the peculiar requirements and uses of this magnificent crop. 3d. After we have taken up and organized into useful, nutritious food the annual supply of plant-food furnished by the soil, we have to study the best method of extracting: this nutri- ment and turning: it into meat, and at the same time save the elements of plant-food in the shape of manure for future crops. Of course, in a paper of this kind, I cannot pro into details. The crying necessity of the age is more and better meat. The better our educa- tion, the more skillful and intelligent our popu- lation ; the harder we work with our brains, the more animal food we seem to require. Improved animal", like the Short-horns for instance, re- quire richer food than Texan cattle, and bright, active, energetic men, as a rule, require, and will have, more nutritious and more easily di- gestible food than the slow, plodding farm laborer of the past. Tn all civilized countries the demand for animal food is increasing much more rapidly than the supply. England is searching the world over for meat. And, what is still more strange, with all our immense area of cultivated land. New England. New York and Pennsylvania send thousands of miles for beef cattle. This is very well, but we shall soon learn that we must look to improved agriculture, rather than to cheap land and semi-wild animals, for a steady supply of good meat. The farmers of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota need have no fears that Texan cattle will crowd out Short-horns and their grades from our markets. We shall produce better meat and we shall get better ? rices for it. Poor meat is the di-arest of all DOd. Many of our farmers think they cannot afford to produce beef and mutton. And this is probably true, unless they produce beef and mutton of better than average quality. There is an astonishing amount of poor meat raised and sold even in the better farmed portions of the country. We must raise arood beef and good mutton. To do this with profit we must furnish richer food and this will afford richer manure. And taking meat and manure into account we can make a profit. A few years ago the wool from Leicester, Cots- wold and other long-wooled English sheep sold for from 20 to 30 per cent, less than Merino wool. Now all thisis changed. Desirable combing wool brings from 20 to 30 per cent, more than Merino. This is a great change. Congress was at one time urged to take off the duty on combine: wool because it was said the farmers of the United States could not produce this kind of wool. It could be grown in Canada, but not here. On the west side of the Suspension Bridge, over the Niagara Kiver, combing wool could be produced of excellent quality, but not on the east side. And while the Canadian farmers on the east side of the Detroit river could produce the best of combing wool, the farmers of Michigan on the west side of the river could not do so. And a member of Congress, a lawyer from the state of New York, and in many respects a very intelli- gent and able man, actually asked me in all sin- cerity and earnestness whether this was not really the fact. I need not say that there is not a particle of truth in the idea. We can raise just as good combing wool in the United States as can be raised in Canada. And the only reason why Canada combing wool sells for from 15 to 20 per cent, higher than our combmg wool is that the Canadian farmers understand the manage- ment of long-wooled English sheep better than we do. They raise more roots and feed better. It is not any difference in soil or climate. We can raise just as good combing wool as can be raised in Canada, and we are learning how to do it. Some time since I read an article in the London Agricultural Gazette headed "The most profit- able flock in Essex, England." Merino sheep were imported into England nearly a century ago when fine wool commanded hijrh prices. But it was found that, owing to the demand for mutton, the coarser-wooled sheep were much more profitable. Still the sheep were kept for many years. Finally, however, the attempt to raise fine wool was abandoned, and these Merino sheep were crossed with the English mutton sheep. And it was a flock of these cross-bred English and Merino sheep that was pronounced the most profitable flock in the County of Essex. My own experience in this country is in the same direction. By selecting a flock of common Merino ewes, which averaged at full maturity 80 pounds each, and which cost me $2.40 per head, and by putting them to a high- bred, pure Cots wold ram I got a lot of strong, healthy lambs which, with good feed, irrew rapidly and afforded excellent mutton and the wool, even the first cross, sold for combing. A second cross, that is, by takine the ewe lambs from the first cross and putting them, when about 18 months old, to a pure- bred Cotswold ram, produced lamhs which ap- proximated closely to the Cotswold in size and in length of wool, while the lambs are hardier and stronger, and the wool finer, and the mut- ton of better quality than the pure-bred Cots- wolds. I killed one of these % Cotswolds-Meri- no sheep, which, at 15 months old, dressed 26 pounds per quarter. We have millions of these hardy, common Merino ewes, which can be bought at from $2 to $4 per head, and two or three crosses of Cots- wold or Leicester blood will, with good feed, give us not "the most profitable flock in Essex" merely, but, in certain sections, the best and most profitable flocks in the world. The Cots- wolds and Leicesters are too fat. The Merinos are too thin. The Cotswold wool is too coarse and unnecessarily long. The Merino wool ia very fine but too short. By crossing, we can get just the wool and mutton most in demand. And the sheep are admirably adapted to our climate. Of course we must feed better than we are in the habit of feeding common Merino flocks, but that is precisely what the require- ments of our agriculture dema ids. We shall feed higher and make much richer manure. Good mutton in England brings a higher price than beef. We are shipping beef quarters to England, we shall ship mutton carcasses also just as soon as the farmers of the United States raise such sheep as I have alluded to. Well- fatted mutton will keep longer and better than beef, and I should think there would be no dif- ficulty in transporting it across the Atlantic. And if I can trust my own taste the mutton of these grade Cotswold-Merino sheep, when well fatted, will be found nearly, or quite equal to South Down mutton, especially when kept till nearly two years old. I have just weighed (Aug. 24) one of my two year-old grade ewes that has been running with the rest of the flock, but which did not have a lamb last spring and is consequently almost fat enough to kill. She has two crosses of Cotswold blood in her, she ia perfect in shape, except that her legs are a little too long, but she is a remarkably strong, vigor- ous sheep, admirably adapted to our climate and mode of farming. She weighed 200H Iba., and would probably dress 28 IDS. to the quarter. I do not wash my own sheep, but I sold some grade lambs to one of my neighbors who washes his sheep. He told me that one of these grade Cotswold-Merino lambs this spring sheared 12 Ibs. of washed wool. Now if we can raise such sheep, and I am sure we can, and if we can send the surplus mutton to England after we have supplied our own markets, I see no reason why we cannot adopt a higher and better system of farming— why, ia other words, we cannot keep more stock, feed higher, and make more and richer manure. There are only two points to be observed : 1st. We must use pure-bred long-wooled rams, and 2nd. We must teed the ewes and lambs liberally. We have plenty of corn, and clover is easily raised, and bran is usually cheap. I hope to live to see the time when we shall send less corn and more mutton across the Atlantic, and when we can raise nearly all our own combing wool. Hitherto we have raised few turnips or other roots for our sheep. Much has been written and said in their favor and many farmers have tried them, only to give them up. The English farm- ers, to a great extent, feed their turnips on the land as they grow. In our own severe oli male we have to keep them in pits or cellars. We aret our seed largely from England and sow the English improved varieties. Twenty-nine years ago t was walking with Mr. Lawes in a turnip field at Kothamstead. We came to a part of the field where, up to a certain row on the right hand, the turnips were much better and larger than on the left hand. "What is the reason?" Tasked. "Has one part of the field been dressed with superphosphate or ma- nured more heavily than the other part?" "No, both were treated alike, but this fine crop is 'Ikerving's Improved Purple-top Swede,' while the other is a common variety which has been grown for some years in this neighborhood. And I wish," said Mr. Lawes, ".you would take a sam- ple from both and analyze them." I did so, and we found the 'improvement' consisted princi- pally of water. The English seed growers have for years made great efforts to improve the va- rieties of turnips and mangels. They have bred for size and shape, and they have attained won- derful success. But the increased s>ze is to a large extent merely an increase of water. They have got varieties so much improved that they can grow 84 tons per acre, nearly 80 tons of whicti is water. Now. in this country we do not wish to pull up, top, draw home, pit and slice up 80 tons of water to get 4 tons of food. We can pump water far cheaper with a wind mill. And turnips and mangels will never be generally grown in this country till we begin to breed for quality rather than tor size. When we can get mangel wurzel that contains but little more water than fresh grass or fresh clover, we shall then be able to gather, store away, cut and feed out the crop at one-third the expense, and the roots would keep better. We should then be able to grow them for winter and early spring use as a substitute for grass. But as long as we are cauyrht by size and sound : as long as we select varieties such as 'Norbiton Giant,' because it grows b'g and has a big name, we shall find little profit in root cult- ure. I am in great hopes, now that there is a prospect of having experimental stations us fast as the means and men can be obtained to estab- lish them, that American seed growers will breed for quality rather than for size. It is a compar- atively easy matter to 'improve' a variety the wrong way; it is easy to take a sugar-beet »nd breed it back to a mangel wurzel. The reverse process may not be so easy, but it can be done. Our roots seldom grow so large or so watery as the same varieties do in England, arid by grow- ing our own seed and selecting bilbs that will give us the largest yield of real food per acre with the least water, we may hope to make some real improvement that will far more than pay the cort of all our experimental stations for the next 20 years. We shall then export mangel wurzel seed to England and France instead of importing it. And I hope and firmly believe that we shall do the same thing with herds of sheep and swine. There is a grand chance for intelligent, skillful, scientific and honest breeders in this country. But we must breed for real merit and not for show. Our experimental stations mut-t test our work as we proceed, showing us the riirht dir« c- tion, and checking us when we are going wronsr. We have, for years, been importing the best cattle and sheep and best swine that England could produce. We have been able to hold our own In the case of pedigreed cattle. But we have not attained like success in the case of English breeds of sheep and pigs. An English- bred sheep or pig almost always makes a better appearance in the show-yard than the home- bred, even though descended directly from th» very choicest imposed stock. It is worth our- while to ask why this is the case. Why cannot we succeed as well with English sheep as with English Short-horns ? I think we may find an answer, at least, in part, in the fact that short-horns have a record- ed pedigree, the sheep and swine have not. The Short-horns are kept as pure in England as they are here. We compete on common ground. But how is it with sheep and swine? If I wish to show a sheep or pijr at the Centennial I am required to fumish evidence that it is "imported or descended from imported animals, and that the home-bi ed shall be of pure blood as far back as the fifth sreneration." No real American breeder will object to this rule. With my own sheep and swine I can com- ply with the condi ions, bur in reply to a request for suggestions I remarked 'hat the same rule ought to be applied to English breeders and to imported s'ock as to American breeders and home-bred animals If not, why not ? I have got Cotswold sheep imported from the best breeders in England, but I have never yet happened to see a pedigree of English sheep or of English pigs that was worth the paper on which it was written. I do not say that English sheep and pigs are not pure, but I do say that,, as a rule, the records do not prove if. And I think that far greater latitude is allowed the English breeders of sheep and swine t han is al- lowed to American breeders. When we get im- ported anim-tils we put numbers in their ears and keep the stock pure. No reputable breeder re- sorts to crosses. And we can furnish longer ped- igrees of Cotswold sheep. Essex. Berkshire and Suffolk pigs in this country than are usually furnished by English breeders. I saw sometime since the pedigree of an im- ported Essex boar. The dam took this and that pi ize- the sire was never beaten at any show, and so of the grand dam, and the grand sire waa. the celebrated boar something-or-other, "the- progenitor of t he race." Trtlk of short pedigrees! Why, it has been claimed, and perhaps justly, that Chester White and Poland China pigs are not established breeds because ten or a dozen or a score generation*; back the pedigree, if they have any. runs back into the American woo«ts, and yet here is a pig, bought in England at a high prioe. that two or three generations carries him back to the " pro- genitor of the race." To the American breeder the future looks bright. If we keep our sheep and swine pure ; if we weed out, vigorously : if we keep ar Inhor. as his ainle form indicates ; the cow for milk, whpn cultivated for that object, and the uniform excellence of their flesh when properly fed and matured. Nor can there be any doubt of the original distinctive blood of the Devon. Their advocates in England claim them to be HS ancient in blood and descent as the Roman rule in that island, many hundred years ago ; but by what evidence, other than in their peculiar style of form and character, is not known. That animals allied to them in blood were brought to America from England so long ago as in the seventeenth century is altogether probable, as many of the native New England cattle, for many generations back, have borne strong resemblances to the Devon in some of their characteristics. The first authentic knowledge we have of thor- oughbred Devons being imported into our coun- try was in the year 1817, by Messrs. Caton and Patterson, of Baltimore, Md., and in the next year by the late distinguished statesman. Rufus King, of Long Island, N. Y. By those gentlemen they were bred and cultivated, and herds from them considerably disseminated in different sec- tions of the country. Later importations of them have been made into Maryland, Massachu- setts, New York and some other states. There are now several fine herds of them existing in different sections of the country, but, we regret to say, not in the numbers which their good qualities should command, but of excellence quite equal to the original importations. It is hoped that they will still further increase, until they become numerous among the standard breeds of our country. HEREFORDS.— Next in order of improved cattle this breed may be named. The first distinct ac count we have of thoroughbred ones of the kind were an importation by the great Kentucky statesman, Henry Clay, in the year 1816. An ar- dent admirer of fine stock, he saw them in Eng- land in 1815, and purchased two pairs of bulls and cows, which afterward came out and were placed on his farm at Ashland, near Lexington. Whether any or what number of thoroughbred produce came from them, we are not informed, as no record was kept, and they are not now known in Kentucky. The bulls were bred to some of the native cows in their vicinity, but the Short-horns, which were imported there soon afterward, superseded them in propagation, and we hear nothing further of their produce. About the year 1834, one or more Hereford bulls, and perhaps a cow or two, were imported into Massachusetts. We hear of no thoroughbred produce from them, but the bulls were bred to a limited extent on common cows, and no marked result followed, except some grand working oxen, afterward fed into excellent carcasses of beef. In later years, a few importations of choice animals were made into New York, Ohio and Upper Canada. Their descendants have been scattered in small herds into several states, but, we regret to say, not with the popularity which such excellent grazing and beef-producing ani- mals merit. As flesh producers they strongly rival the Short-horns, and in size nearly equal them. They are mainly red in color, with white or mottled faces, aud occasionally white legs and bellies, and stripes along the back. In England they are claimed as an ancient breed, and their distinctive uniform appearance well beard out the assertion. The three English breeds already named may be classed as the best flesh-producers. Next in order may be named the breeds more distinctly used for dairy purposes: the AYRSHIRE.— This is claimed as a dairy or milk- ing breed, and wherever known, either at their native homes in Scotland, or in their later ones 58 in the United States, are esteemed and cultivated for that exclusive purpose. They are said, by authentic history, to have been originated about a century ago in the district of Ayrshire, whence the name was taken, by a cross of Short-horn bulls from the north of England on the common or native Kyloe cow of Scotland, and cultivated into their present excellent dairy qualities by careful and persistent breeding, until their char- acteristics have become fixed and enduring. They were first imported in small numbers to America between the years 1830 and 1830, as nearly as can be ascertained, and within the last thirty years in such numbers as now to be found in many considerable herds. They are highly esteemed by those who are partial to them for their large yields of milk, which render them much more profitable for dairy uses than the common cows of the country. In size they are about equal to our common cattle ; in color, usually red or brown, more or less mixed with white ; in shape, more like the Short-horn than any others, although lacking their fine contour and comeliness of appearance—a valuable breed of cattle. HOLSTEINS, OB NORTH HOLLANDS. — This breed, in its present characteristic of great milk-producing quality, has been introduced here within the last twelve or fifteen years, from Holland, and first, we believe, imported by the late Mr. Chenery, of Boston, Massachusetts. They are of large size, nearly equal in weight and bulk to the Short-horn, and have some of their strong points of character, but coarser, less refined in figure, and black and white in color. For the few years in which they have be'en on trial here, their dairy development has been remarkable in the quantity of their milk. As a flesh-producing beast they are claimed to be good, but the economical result in their con- sumption of food to weight of flesh has not been thoroughly solved. They are unquestion- ably good cattle, far superior to our native cows; and when sufficient time has passed to develop their full qualities, they may stand in the first class of dairy cows. They are evident- ly of an ancient stock, originating possibly in Holstein or North Holland, and may in some branches of their ancestry have had an affinity with the far-back, unimproved Short-horns, al- though in color and general appearance now much unlike our Short-horns of the present day. Last, but not least in importance, may be named the ALDEBNEY, JEBSEY, AND GUEBNSEY, from the Channel Islands of Britain, near the coast of France. These breeds or varieties are named together, as they are unquestionably of com- mon origin, and owe their present distinctive qualities in appearance to their manner of breeding, and the tastes and preferences of their long-time propagators. That they are an an- cient breed there can be no doubt, probably French in origin, as the cows of the provinces of Normandy and Brittany bear a considerable resemblance to them ; but isolated as they have been from the mainland of the continent during the centuries of their cultivation on the islands, they have assumed the characteristics which so readily distinguish them. In size they are smaller than our native cows, delicate in form, unique in shape, diversified in color, and blood- like in appearance. The prime quality claimed for the cow is the exceeding yellow color and rich quality of her milk, cream, and butter, in all which she stands without a rival, although her quantity of milk is moderate, compared with the weight of butter which it yields. For the production of meat the channel island cow, or even bullock, (whenever suffered to become a bullock,) is inferior, the anatomy being angu- lar, and not capable of making much flesh in the choicest parts of the carcass. Within the last thirty years they have been numerously imported into our States, and are much sought in the vicinities of our large cities, towns, and villages as family cows. They are easily kept in small paddocks or close stables, where their rather delicate natures can receive the attention, kind treatment, and choice food usually bestow- ed upon them. For all these' improved breeds herd-books con- taining their genealogy, by way of pedigree, are kept in the United States, as well as in their native countries, and from them a full knowledge of their descent and blood is readily obtained by all who choose to inquire into their breeding. Prices might be quoted of the sale values of several of these breeds of cattle- some of them seemingly extravagant in amount —but such statistical reference is not demand- ed in this limited discourse, rather leaving it to the tastes, judgments, and fancies of those in- terested in their breeding. The introduction of these improved breeds has added enormously to the value of the neat-stock of our country, and their further dissemination is yet to add un- told millions to its productive agriculture. Slow as farmers, cattle-breeders, graziers, and dairymen have proverbially been in the im- provement of their herds, a rapid and more in- telligent interest is every year manifested in their increase. In addition to the breeds of cattle already named may be a few others of foreign origin introduced at different times by way of experi- ment or personal gratification; but as they have taken no strong hold on the attention of our stock-breeders, a further notice of them may- be omitted, while in the grand specimens of the various breeds which have been mentioned we may assert, without contradiction, that no country in the universe contains better herds than the United States of America can now ex- hibit. The subject of our neat-cattle can hardly be dismissed without an allusion to an important item of their increasing value in fresh beef ex- portation, which has recently been developed by the demand for fresh carcass meat from abroad, particularly in Great Britain. Refrig- erators have been fitted up in Atlantic steam- ships, and, by the aid of ice, many tons of beef, in quarters of the carcass, have already been, and unlimited tons more may continue to be, transported to Europe with entire safety, and in perfect freshness. The prices for which it has been sold in the London and Liverpool markets have proved equal to those for the best qualities of their native beef, and profit- able to the shippers. There is, however, a con- dition attached to our successful exports, which is, that the meat be of the best quality, and that quality can only be obtained from animals of improved breeds which have been partially described. We have only to proceed in the cul- tivation of those breeds, in order to add a wide, almost illimitable, field of production to the neat-stock interests of our country. SHEEP. These were early introduced into our American colonies as companions of the horses and cattle brought by the settlers. They were of the kinds then common to England, Scotland, Ireland and perhaps the western coast of the European con- tinent, of various breeds, as they then locally prevailed, but without much merit, other than a tolerable carcass of ordinary flesh and a mod- erate fleece of coarse wool. They were so kept and propagated, with possibly an occasional im- portation of a better kind from England, but it was not until late in the last century that Bake- well, Ellmau and other enterprising breeders made their experiments in different breeds which resulted in any considerable improvement in their condition and appearance. Thus the 54 American sheep were chiefly of an inferior char- acter MERINO.— In the early years of the present century the American embassadorsatthe courts of France, Spain and Portugal, during the in- tense commotions of the Bonapartean wars, purchased and shipped to the United States many hundreds of Spanish Merino sheep. They were of the flne-wooled varieties, named as you will find in our books on sheep husbandry. Their in- troduction here was hailed with great satisfac- tion, and as our infant woolen manufactories were then just emerging- into existence, great importance was given to their propagation, not only in their own purity of blood, but as valua- ble crosses on our common flocks in increasing and refining the qualities of their wool. From those days forward to the present time the cul- tivation of the better qualities of wool has been the study of numerous flock-masters in various parts of the United States, suitable to their rear- ing, and the sheep interest now presents an im- portant branch of our agricultural production and wealth. The Spanish Merino has evidently been much improved in its American cultivation, not only through the crosses of more recent im- portation by several of our enterprising Ameri- cans from the royal flocks of France, Saxony and Silesia, upon the earlier Merino ewes, but by our own flock-masters at home, so that at this day no fine-wool sheep in the world excel, and few equal, the American Merinos in the heavy products of their fleeces, or the size and stamina of their bodies. We might examine the statis- tics of their annual production aggregating mil- lions of dollars in value did opportunity permit, but we may rest content with the general facts which have been stated and the progress we have made in their cultivation, Hot only in the fine wool but in the other varieties. THE COARSER- WOOLED MUTTON- SHEEP, so suc- cessfully bred in England during the last seventy years, we have for the past thirty years adopted by frequent importations. They have been suc- cessfully propagated in their own purity of blood, and by their crosses on the common flocks raised our inferior ones to a value hitherto un- known in their kind. We have now the Bake- well, or Leicester, the Cotswold, and Lincoln, all of the most valuable long- wool varieties. We have also the Southdown, the Shropshire and Oxford Downs of the middle wools, abundant in fleece, massive in the quantity and delicious in the excellence of tneir flesh, so that Ameri- cans may, within the next decade or two, be- come, as they have never yet become, a partially mutton- consuming people, and ship thousands of dressed carcasses to Britain, as is now done with our fresh beef. SWINE. In the category of other domestic animals brought into our country with the early immi- grants came also this animal indispensable for domestic consumption, constituting an import- ant item in our exports abroad. From the ear- liest history, swine have been connected with farm-husbandry, as well as untamed rangers of the forest, in which latter condition they even now exist in some of the uncultivated sections of the Eastern continent. To what degree of perfection, or even improvement, they were cul- tivated in ancient times, history gives us little or no account; but we do know that for many years previous to the present century, and for some years since, the common swine of the Uni- ted States were inferior in the quality of their flesh, ungainly in form, slow in arriving at ma- turity, and repulsive in almost every phase of their character as companions to our other agri- cultural stock. Yet in Eastern Asia, and in por- tions of Europe, perhaps for a century or more past, considerable advances had been made in the improvement of their domestic swine, as a few years after the revolutionary war, importa- tions of improved animals of the kind were in- troduced into our country, and among them we have accounts that General Washington had some of them which were sent over as a present to him at Mount Vernon, from England. Early in the present century, also, the East India mer- chants of Massachusetts and New York imported some fine specimens from China and India, which were afterward considerably crossed on the common stocks of our Eastern States, and much improved them both in the qualities of their flesh and domestic habits. Still, until within the last fifty, or even forty years, the mass of our farmers throughout the country, and more par- ticularly in the Western States, bred and reared swine of ordinary character, answering, to be sure, the main requirements of consumable flesh, but inferior in its high condition to that now found in our markets, either for domestic consumption or exportation. The various foreign breeds to which we are indebted for our present swine improvement are too numerous to mention, and their history in detail, though quite interesting, is too long to narrate, but the agricultural literature of our several states will fully inform all inquirers of their various progress and present status. As an evidence of the present interest in their pro- duction and improvement, an association of swine-breeders has recently been formed, whose headquarters are at Spring-field, 111. They have issued a swine herd-book for the Berkshire breed, after the style of the various cattle herd- books, in which their genealogy and high excel- lences are chronicled. Not that we woud exa^lt this particular breed above others, perhaps equally meritortous, but to signalize the enter- prise of our farmers, and the magnitude of the pork and lard-producing interest of our country amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars an- nually. The swine of the United States now con- sume a great share of the product of the almost illimitable corn fields of our Western and upper Southern States, thus converting a great portion of that valuable grain into a portable commodity, which, without them, would be either a drug, or an almost inconvertible staple of their agri- culture. We may, in view of the progress we have made in swine cultivation and improve- ment, place the United States superior to that of any other country in the world. POULTRY. To descend to a smaller, yet quite indispensable, item of food consumption in pur households, as well as ornamental accompaniments of domestic life, the varieties of our poultry may well and profitably be mentioned. They, too, (the turkey excepted) came over with the early settlers of our American colonies, and have been the inti- mate associates of our people ever since. They constitute an important part ot the luxury of our tables, both in their flesh and eggs, the ag- gregate commercial value of which, were it ac- curately reckoned, amounts to millions of dol- lars annually. The poultry literature of our country is voluminous, both in books and vari- ous agricultural periodicals, to which those in search of information may readily refer. As a general remark, it may suffice to say that im- portations from foreign countries, of various breeds of them, have been frequent and of rare quality, both in the estimation of the economist who propagates them for profit, as well as the amateur, for the gratification of his taste in their selection and exhibition. Poultry societies have become numerous throughout the land, and the annual exhibitions of their various specimens have been marvelous iu excellence, beauty, and vaiiety. The cultivation of the finer varieties has arrested the attention of men and women of taste, wealth and refinement to such an ex- 55 tent that the perfection of our poultry may even be classed among the fine arts of animated na- ture, and challenge competition with any por- tion of the universe. Least and last of the domestic creatures which engage our attention may be named a small in- sect, THE HONEY BEE. Time, long before and ever since the bee made its honey in the carcass of the dead lion slain by Sampson, has noted this useful insect in its com- panionship with man, as well as in its wild habi- tations in the wilderness, where climate and vegetation favored its propagation. It furnish- es us the most luxuriant of sweets in its honey, and an important commodity in its wax. The aggregate annual commercial value of our bee- product is probably Imndreds of thousands of dollars, being difficult to determine, from the want of current statistics ; yet all who choose to investigate may be assured of their import- ance. Of bee literature, we have public jour- nals devoted to their interest, many volumes of printed books, and divers essays in our agricul- tural periodicals : and were I to relate the an- nals of my own personal companionship with them for many years past, I should only tell you, that at the present day they are both as untam- ed and uncivilized as when the great patriarch, Noah, let them out of his ark to forage among the renewed plants and flowers at the foot of Mount Ararat. They live, propagate, and sub- sist by instinct alone, and not all the invention or ingenuity of man has been able to improve their qualities, to change their habits, or invite them to a companionable docility. Even the importation of the superior Italian bee into our country in late years, and crossing them on our common stock, has not perceptibly improved their habits. So, lovable as they may be in their sweets and wax, they are barbarians now, as ever, and equally at home in the hollow trunk of a tree in the wildest forest, as in their hives amid the flowers of the field, or the refinements of the most highly cultivated orchard and gar- den. Now, gentlemen, in all this long dissertation I have probably told you nothing new, and little which will prove instructive, or even worthy of publication. Yet we have seen that from the rudest material at the beginning of our agricul- tural settlements we have made decided pro- gress in the breeding and cultivation of our do- mestic animals, and that chiefly, within the last century. We find that much has thus far been accomplished, and with the aids and lights now at our disposal, we trust a still more rapid and a more widely disseminated progress can be achieved in the future. The present value of all our varieties of do- mestic live stock in the United States and its territories may be safely estimated at two thou- sand millions of dollars, and their annual pro- duct of all kinds at one thousand millions more. Full 30 per cent, has been added to the aggregate per capita value of ourlgraded stock by improvements in their breeding within the last fifty years, and at no increased cost in their keeping, although those improved animals as yet extend over only a fractional part of our country. What then may be the increased measure of value when— if such a thing be pos- sible—that improvement shall embrace the farm- stock of our entire broad nationality ? It must be almost incalculable. In review of this live-stock history and pro- gress which has been considered, I wish here to note, and with somewhat of emphasis, that, with the exception of our finer classes of horses, the breeding, rearing, and cultivation of our farm-stock has been hitherto considered, by those not intimately acquainted with it, as an occupation of a rather vulgar order, and con- ducted by men of duller intellects than those engaged In professional, scientific, commercial, or manufacturing pursuits. Such a supposition is a profound and ignorant mistake, based only on an entire misapprehension of the study of animal physiology. The cultivation of domestic animals, and their improvement, through gene- rations of their kind, into the admirable speci- mens which we now see, is as much a branch of the fine arts, applied to animal physiology, as are the superb specimens of statuary and paint- ing which you to-day witness in these Centen- nial rooms, produced by the successors of Phi- dias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, or Claude Lor- raine. Among the improvers of domestic live stock within the last two centuries, both in Europe and America, will be found men of the highest intellect, learning, refinement, position, and wealth, whose studies have been drawn to the development and exaltation of the qualities of their animals. I need not recount the names of distinguished Europeans, past and present, who have lent their influence and labors to that pur- suit ; nor to Americans, from George Washing- ton, of Virginia, Chancellor Livingston, of New York, Henry Clay, the great Kentucky states- man, and a large number of eminent men of all professions and pursuits, aside from enterpris- ing farmers proper, whose main business has been that of breeding and rearing improved classes of stock— names both dead and living, all too numerous to mention. Nor has the at- tention of those breeders and improvers been limited to the most valuable classes of stock, but equally so to those of minor commercial value. Women, too, of equal rank and position in society with men, both in Europe and Amer- ica, may be classed in the noble array of fine- stock improvers— all in their labors benefactors of mankind. God has appointed our lot in a country of di- versified climates, and blessed it with a won- drous fertility of soils. If a due improvement of our advantages be hereafter neglected, on those guilty of that neglect will rest the penalty; and yet, when another Centennial of American Independence shall arrive, we trust that those who then succeed us may rejoice, as we, their progenitors, now do at the present, in a still higher advancement to crown their labors with thanksgiving and gratitude to the benignant Father of Mercies, for the successes they shall have achieved and enjoyed. AMERICAN DAIRYING. By X. A. WILLARD. A. M. [An address before the National Agricultural Congress at Philadelphia, Sept. 13, 1876.] Gentlemen :— Dairying is of very ancient origin. The manufacture of cheese and butter was known and practiced more than three thousand years ago. In the earliest history of the human race mention is made of cheese and butter, and there is reason to believe that these products were known and used as food many ages before the earliest record of them by the writers of antiquity. The earliest notice of the manufacture of cheese in the Bible is where Job, complaining of life, says : " Hast Thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me as cheese V" David was sent to his brethern in the Valley of Elah with this injunction : " Carry these ten cheeses to the Captain of their thousands and look how thy brethern fare." Homer, the grand old poet of the Greeks, makes record of the dairy in the following lines, written nearly a thousand years before the Christain era : " Around the grot we gaze, and all in view In order ranged, our admiration drew, The bending shelves with loaves of cheeses pressed, The folded flocks, each seperate from the rest." Julius Caesar says the principal food of the Germans in his day consisted of milk, cheese and flesh, and he gives a similar account of the Gauls or ancient inhabitants of France. Allusion to butter is several times made in the Old Testament, but the earliest is in Gene- sis, in Abraham's time. When he had washed the feet of the angel visitors, and given them a little cold water, it is recorded : " He took but- ter and milk and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree and they did eat." Thus it will be seen that the products of the dairy— milk, butter and cheese— have a geneol- ogy that goes far back of the " Doomsday Book." They have a history forty centuries old, and this it would seem must be old enough for the most fastidious lover of " old cheese." But what must be considered remarkable in this connection is that these products have been regarded in all ages of the world as luxuries, or among the highest types of human food. Abra- ham set before his angel visitors " milk and but. ter, and they did eat." Now with all due re- spect for the wonderful progress of this cen- tury, and the skill of our "gilt-edged butter makers," can we not reasonably infer that the butter of Abraham's time, fit to be set before the angels, could have been anything less than ex- cellent, and doubtless it was far superior to much of the butter made at this day, which I am sorry to say is hardly fit to set before even the wicked. But I have proposed to speak to you upon "American Dairying," which at best as a spe- cialty can hardly be considered a century old. Dairying as a specialty was practiced in Eng- land and Holland, and in other parts of Europe previous to the 16th century, and the early emigrants to this country must have brought with them the art of butter and cheese making. But previous to the year 1800 there seems to have been no considerable number of diaries grouped together and prosecuting the business as a specialty in any part of America. Most farmers in those days kept a stock of horned cattle— animals raised for beef, for working oxen, with cows for breeding and for producing milk, butter and cheese to supply home wants. The farming of those days was of a mixed character, nearly every want of the family be- ing supplied from the farm. In the fall of 1800 a very exciting election was had for President of the United States, the can- didates being Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, and to this circumstance are we indebted to a bit of Dairy history. The first really notable affair concerning the dairy that had as yet occurred in the New World. In those days one of the great pulpit politicians of New England was Elder John Lei and. Politics ran high, and the contest between Fed- eralists and Democrats was almost as bitter as that between Republicans and Democrats to-day. Puritan pulpits launched their thunderbolts against Jefferson, the great Democratic leader, charging him with being an infidel of the French revolutionary school. In the little town of Cheshire, nestling among the middle hills of Massachusetts, says Mr. Burrett (to whose his- tory of the affair I am indebted), "a counter voice of great power was lifted up from its pul- pit against the flood of obloquy and denunciation that rolled and roared against Jefferson and Democracy. This was Elder John Leland, one of the most extraordinary preachers produced by those stirring times, and he preached such stirring Jeffersonian Democracy to the people of Cheshire, that for generations they never voted anything but a "straight Democratic ticket." Democracy prevailed and Jefferson was elected President, and no man had done more to bring about this result than Elder John Leland of the little hill town of Cheshire, Massachusetts. Be- sides influencing thousands ot outsiders in the same direction, he had brought up his whole congregation and parish to vote for the father of American Democracy. Democracy in those days I fancy, was different from the Reform Democ- racy of to-day, but be it as it may. He now resolved to set the seal of Cheshire to the election in a way to make the nation know there was such a town in the republic of Israel. He had only to propose the method to com- mand the unanimous approbation and indorse- ment of his people, and he did propose it to a full congregation on the Sabbath. With a few earnest words he invited every man and woman who owned a cow to bring every quart of milk given on a certain day, or all the curd it would make, to a great cider mill belonging to their townsman, Capt. John Brown, who was the first man to detect and denounce the treachery of Benedict Arnold in the Revolution. No Federal cow was allowed to contribute a drop of milk to the offering lest it should leaven the whole lump with a distasteful savor. It was the most glo- rious day the sun ever shone upon before or since in Cheshire. Its brightest beams seemed to bless the day's work. With their best Sunday clothes under their white tow frocks came the men and boys of the town, down from the hills, up from the valleys, with their contributions to the great offering, in pails and tuba. Mothers, wives and all the rosy maidens of these rural homes came in their white aprons and best cai- 57 ico dresses to the sound of the church bell, and that called young and old, rich and poor, to the great co-operative fabrication. In farm wagons, in Sundny wagons, in carts and all kinds of four wheeled and two wheeled vehicles they wended their way to the general rendezvous, all exhuber- ant with the spirit of the occasion. It was not only a threat glad gathering of all the people of the town, but of half of their yoked oxen and family horses, and these stepped off iu the march with the animation of a holiday. An enormous hoop had been prepared, placed upon the bed of the cider press, which bad been well purified for the work, and covered with a false bottom of the purest material. The hoop resting on this formed a huge cheese box or seg- ment of a cistern, and was placed directly under three powerful wooden screws which turned up the massive head block above. A committee of arrangements met the con- tributors as they arrived and conducted them to the great, white, shallow vat into which they poured their contingents of curd, from the large tubs of well-to-do dairymen to the six quart pail of the poor owner of a single cow. When the last contribution was given in, a select commit- tee of the town addressed themselves to the nice and delicate task of mixing and flavoring and tinting such a mass of curd as was never brought to press before. But the farmers' wives of Ches- shire were equal to the duty and responsibility of the office. All was now ready for the coup de grace of the operation. The signal was given ; the ponderous screws twisted themselves out from the huge beam over head with even thread and line. And now the whey ran around the circular channels of the board bed in little foamy bubbling rivers. The machinery worked to a charm. The stout young farmers manned the long levers ; the acrews creaked and posts and beams responded to the pressure with a sound between a puff and groan. It was a complete success. The young men in their shirt sleeves, and with flushed and moistened faces, rested at the levers, for they had moved them to the last inch of their force. All the congregation with the children in the middle stood in a compact circle around this great press. The Juue sun britrhtened their faces with its most genial beams and brought into the happiest illumination the thoughts that beat in their hearts, then Elder Leland, standing up on a block of wood, and with his deep-lined face overlooking the whole assembly, spread out his great toil hardened hands, and looking stead- fastly with open eyes heavenward, as if to see the pathway of his thanksgiving to God and the return blessing on its descent, offered up the gladness and gratitude of his flock for the one earnest mind that had inspired them to that day's deed, and invoked divine favor upon it and the national leader for whom it was designed. When the cheese was well cured and ready for use it weighed sixteen hundred pounds; but as it could not be safely conveyed on wheels to its destination, it waited until mid-winter, then it was placed on a sleigh and no one but Elder John Leland could be entrusted with the precious load. He took the reins, driving all the way from Cheshire to Washington, full five hundred miles, receiving testimonials and varying acclamations in the towns through which he passed. Arriving in Washington, Mr. Jefferson received him in state, the big cheese was duly presented and speeches made, and the President's steward passed a long, glittering knife through the cheese, taking out a deep golden wedge, which was served with bread and ale in presence of the heads of Departments, Foreign Ministers and many other eminent personages. It was highly complimented for its richness, flavor and color, and was the most perfect specimen cheese ever exhibited at the White House. Then Mr. Jeffer- son sent a great golden wedge of the cheese back to the makers, which they ate with double relish as the President's gift to them as well as theirs to him. THE OLDEST DAIRY DISTRICT IN AMERICA. Few years previous to this memorable event a sturdy young farmer from New England, cross- ed the Hudson and slowly made his way up the valley of the Mohawk, which has been denomina- ted the " Gateway of the Continent." He was the first who began cheese dairying in Herkimer county. He came into the country on foot. He was rich in health and strength. He had eight silver shillings in his pocket, an axe on his shoul- der and two stout arms to swing it. Except along the Mohawk nearly the whole country was then a dense forest. Brant, the fa- mous Mohawk chief, and his bloody warriors had been gone several years, but traces of their pill- age and murders were fresh among the early settlers in the valley and along the river. The old Dutch heroine, Mrs. Shell, was then living near Fort Dayton. She was a noted character during the Revolution. Her husband being- called out to fight the Tories and Indians, she took her infant to the field and helped her eldest son, a lad. to hoe the corn, with a musket strap- ped to her shoulder. The savages in more than one encounter with the Shell family had learned to fear and respect Mrs. ShHl. Her aim was steady and her bullets death. When the Indians beseiged her log house she fought side by side with her husband all day and all night, battering the guns with an axe as they thrust them through between the logs, and filing upon the assailants until help came from the fort. The house stood on the black slate hills rising near the Mohawk to the north, overlook- ing a long line of charming scenery. Beyond was a valley and a still higher elevation. Here the sturdy young New Engiander picked his land. His strong arms felled the timber over many acres. He built his log house and estab- lished his herd upon the soil. From such beginning sprang the mighty giant that is now stalking over the Continent, dotting the land with countless herds. From 1800 to 1826 cheese dairying had become pretty general in Herkimer county, but the herds were mostly small. So early as 1812 the largest herds, numbering about forty cows each, were those belonging to Wm. Ferris, Samuel Carpenter, Nathan Salisbury and Isaac Smith, in the northern part of the county, and they were regarded as extraordinary for their size. About this time (1826) the business began to be planted in the adjoining counties in single dairies, here and there, and generally by persons emigrating from Herkimer county. The imple- ments and appurtenances of the dairy were then very rude. The milking was done in open yards, and milking barns were unknown. The milk was curdled in tubs — the curd cut with a long wooden knife or broken with the hands and pressed in log presses standing exposed to the weather. The cheeses were thin and small. They were held through the season and in the fall when ready for market they were packed in rough casks made for the purpose, and shipped to different localities for home consumption. The leading buyers previous to 1826, were Wm. Ferris and Robert Nesbith, from Massachusetts. Nesbith was a Quaker and had a long face. Fer- ris, his partner, was of a gay and festive turn, and the fact of their partnership was not known to the dairymen. Their manner of conducting trade was unique and very satisfactory to them- selves at least. First, Nesbith, the Quaker went his rounds visiting every dairy. Putting on a sad lugubri- ous cheek, he knew how to impress dairymen as to the inferiority of their goods, and to raise se- rious doubt in their minds as to whether cheese could be marketed at anything like living rates. 58 Nesbith spoke of the difficulties of trade and the pressure of the money market. He was un- decided and not exactly prepared to purchase, though sometimes in exceptionable cases he was prevailed upon to buy small lots at low fig- ures. By the time he got through his visitation the dairymen were feeling somewhat discour- aged and were ardently hoping to see some other buyer. Then the festive Ferris made his appear- ance, and his off-hand rushing way of doing bu- siness, carried the conviction that he was a reck- less operator. His prices were considerably higher than those offered by Nesbith, and the dairymen fell into the trap and sold their goods, wondering if the buyer was thoroughly posted in regard to the markets. In 1826 Henry Burrell. of Herkimer county, then a young man full of enterprise and cour- age, having learned something of the markets and the game played by Nesbith and Ferris, "stole a march" on these skillful operators, buying a large share of the cheese at a price above that fiarured by the Massachusetts firm. He afterwards bpoame the chief denier in dairy goods in central New York, often purchasing the entire product of cheese made in the United States. He was the first, to open a cheese trade with England, commencing shipping as a ven- ture, about 1880 to 1832 at the suggestion of the late Erastus Corning of Albany. The first ship- ment was about 10,000 pounds. He was the first also to send cheese to Phila- delphia, shipping to B. & B. Cooper in 1828 and to Jonathan Palmer in 1830 and 1833. Mr. Burrell is still in the trade, though nearly eighty years of age, and has shipped cheese abroad every year during the past fifty years, his shipments the present summer (1876) being about 1,000 boxes a week. He is among the few American dealers who have amassed a colossal fortune in the trade, and by his strict integrity and honest dealinif has ever retained the confidence of dairymen. In tracing the history of cheese dairying in other states, I find the emigration of Herkimer county dairymen often gave these new localities the first impetus to this branch of industry— thus leading the way more easily to the intro- duction of the factory system. Crossing the line into Canada, we find Harvey Farrington, an old Herkimer county dairyman, in 1864-5, leading the way by building the first factories in the Province of Ontario, and teach- ing the art of manufacture to our Canadian neighbors. Previous to this, the Canadians bought largely from the states. Now they pro- duce from thirty to forty millions of pounds an- nually, and are our sharpest competitors in the export trade. PROGRESS OF THE EXPORT TRADE. In about 1848-9, or about eighteen years from the first shipment of cheese to Great Britain, our exports had increased to 15.000,000 pounds. The whole production of cheese that year in the United States was not far from 100,000,000 pounds, about 43,000,000 of which was received at the tide water* of the Hudson. British ship- pers that year (1848-9) were enthusiastic ; draw- ing upon us for what was then considered an extraordinary quantity, viz: 15,000.000 pounds, but they met with severe losses, which caused a more moderate demand the following year, and prices tell about one cent per pound, varying for fair to strictly prime, from 5c to 6&C for Ohio cheese, and 6c to 6% tor New York State. The amount exported that year (1849-50) was 12,000,000 pounds, the supply tothe tide waters of the Hud- son being about 42,000,000 pounds. Five-sixths of the exports were bought and shipped by the middle of January, and the remainder, say 2,000,- 000 pounds, was .bought by two or three parties at 5?£c to 6&C, which was generally thought by the trade to be too dear. In 1851 the whole consumption of foreign cheese in England, including that from America, had Increased to 48.000,000 pounds, an increase amounting to about 250 per cent, since 1831. From 1848 to 1858 the exports of American cheese to England were not increased and they fell back in 1858 to 5,000,000 pounds ; but about this time American butter began be be exported in considerable quantities. In 1859 there were about two and one-half million pounds of butter and 9,000,000 pounds of cheese exported. Dur- ing the following year the butter export was 11,- 000,000 pounds. There was no increase in the make of American cheese during the ten years from 1850 to I860, the census reports giving the amount in 1850 at 105,000,000 against 103,000,000 in 1860. The quality of the great mass of butter and cheese during this decade was undoubtedly in- ferior as, a rule. The principles underlying the great art of manufacturing these products were very im- perfectly understood. In 1860 Samuel Perry of New York attempted to control the entire export product of American dairies. He sent his agents early in the season, throughout the whole dairy section of New York and Ohio, then the only two states from which cheese was exported, and they contracted for him the bulk of the farm dairies at an average price of from 8c to lOc per pound. A large share of the cheese in those days was bought on credit, a small sum being paid during summer, but the final settlement and paympnt was made on the first of January, Mr. Perry by offering a penny or so per pound, more than other dealers believed tne market would war- rant, was enabled to secure almost the entire make of the season. A great disaster as is well known followed this purchase. Much of the cheese was badly made and it rotted on his hands and was thrown into the docks. Sales, could not be made in England to cover cost. The approach- ing war caused troublous times and cutoff our Southern trade. Financial difficulties at the opening of 1861 were frequent and pressing and the great merchants went to the wall leaving thousands of dairymen unpaid. The lesson was a severe one to all concerned, but, it was use- ful in this,— that ever after dairymen have been cautious in selling on long credits, while no one dealer, single handed, has since that time attempted to control a product which from its increased magnitude is beyond the grasp of our means and resources. Although Mr. Jesse Williams of Rome, N. Y., had conceived the idea of the tactory system, and put it in operation in 1857, it did not begiu to attract attention until about 1860. Up to this date (1860) only 23 factories had been erect- ed, but as the factory cheese was generally bet- ter made, and more uniform in shape, texture and quality, and as less labor resulted in mak- ing as well as in buying1— ( because cheese was then bought on the shelves on personal inspec- tion,) the system began to be regarded with favor by both dealers and farmers. Mr. Williams learned the art of cheese dairy- ing in Herkimer. He was an original thinker, and to him are we indebted more than to any other, for the great progressive step which places American dairying to-day in the front rank among the nations of the earth. The whole frame work of the American system sprung from his brain in one harmonious whole and although, he was fruitful in the invention of implements and appliances adapted to his work, he took out no patents, but presented tne result of his labors as a gratuity to the world. The inestimable benefits that have come, and >etto come from the original labors of Mr, Williams can scarcely be estimated, It put American dairying upon a footing by which it could measure arms with any other branch of Agriculture, and in the great state of New York it towers above all other agricultural interests combined: for if we add all the ad- juncts of the dairy together ; the value of pork made from whey and sour milk, the calves raised and beef and milk sold, we can hardly get the annual product from the dairy farms of New York, below an hundred millions of dol- lars. In 1870 the grain raised in the State, was in round numbers as follows: Wheat, 12,000.000 bushels ; rye, 2.000.000; corn, 16,000,000 ; oats, 35,- 000,000; barley, 7,000,000 and buckwheat, 3,000,000 bushels. The wool clip of the state, that year, was 10,500.000 pounds. Now in 1870 there were nearly 136,000,000 (135,- 175,919) gallons of milk sold in the state, which at 5 cents per quart, amounts to over 37,000,000 dollars. The butter made that year in the state was, according to the United States census, 107,- 147,526 pounds, and this was worth that year more than 30,000 000 dollars. Going back to 1840, we ttnct^the value of the dairy products of New York, butter, cheese, and milk, was estimated (according to the United States Census,) at only 10,496. OUO dollars, and in all the States at about 34,000,000 dollars. Mark the enormous increase in 30 years, rising from $10,000,000 to $IUO,000,000. About the year 1862-3, 1Alanson Slaughter of Orange Co., N. ¥"., conceived the idea of adapt- ing the associated system to butter making. He arranged his factory with pools of flowing spring water for reducing the temperature of the milk which he set iti deep and narrow cans. This was the first butter factory that had been built, on the continent, or indeed in the world. His plans were original and novel, and as the choicest butter was made under his system, it was the commencement of the most important improvement in butter making, hitherto known in America. The system has been oarriad into Sweden and Denmark and other parts of Europe and wherev- er planted, whether in the old or in the new world has been the means of raising the standard of butter and promoting its consumption in a mar- vellous degree. In 1862 the butter product of the United States was aoout 500,080,000 pounds, of which we export- ed about 30,000,000. To-day our annual product is estimated at from 700,000,000 to 1,000,000.000, of pounds, and we export scarcely anything. Butter factories have been carried into many states, and although the plan of setting milk has been varied in regard to deep or shallow vessels, it would have been impossible to have developed this interest to its present vast proportions if the associated system had not been inaugurated and applied to this branch of the dairy. It promoted an inquiry and desire for better things, and consumers as they get a taste of the "golden appetizer," with its fine grainy texture and rosy aroma, become fond of it beyond meas- ure, and they stimulate manufacturers to put forth their best efforts for perfection, by pay- ing extraordinary prices for a " fancy article." In 1863-4 the associated dairy system had be- come aa established fact. Somehow, the im- pression became general among the farming community that the dairy was reaping enormous profits. An intense interest prevailed, not only in New York, but in Ohio, Vermont, and other states, to obtain knowledge on the subject, and this led to the inauguration of the " New York State Cheese Manufacturers' Association." A meeting was called at Rome, Jan. 4, 1864, and the atten- dance was BO large that it filled the largest hall in that city, delegates being present from sev- eral states. No such enthusiastic gathering of those in- terested in agriculture had ever been held in this country, and people went away from the meeting with the liveliest anticipation of amass- ing fortunes from the dairy. That year 210 new factories were erected in the state of New York alone, and the system was carried into other states. Subsequently, the association was merged into the "American Dairymen's Associa- tion," and state associations began to spring up in the different states. I need not speak of the success of these associations. Thousands of people flock to them year after year. They have created a dairy literature which, from its wide dissemination has had a vast influence in edu- catinsr the masses in this department of farming. Contrasting the flood of light which now illu- mines the path of the dairymen with the meagre knowledge he possessed twenty years ago, the slough from which we have emeregd seems in- finitely deep and dark. By means of our asso- ciated system and our dairy conventions, the American dairy industry now leads the world, and Europe begins to copy from us. England has inaugurated our factory system, and now is about to resort to our plan of holding conven- tions, in order to move her people from the lethargy and stagnation into which they and her dairy interests have fallen. At the late meeting of the Royal agricultural Society at Birmingham, the " British Dairy- men's Association" was organized, and the plan of holding conventions similar to ours will be adopted. But this is not all. It has been pro- posed to hold twenty-four annually at some large centre— as Birmingham, for instance. A "National and International Cheese and Butter Show " for prizes, and combined with this a con- gress at which papers are to be read and discus- sions had upon them. "A National and Interr national Congress" upon the subject of dairying in England means something more than a rambl- ing discussion, for it will call tog-ether many of the distinguished scientists of Europe who have made long and carefully-conducted investiga- tions concerning the different constituents of milk and their relation to the product manufac- tured. Thus, you will see, that what may be called a purely American movement or idea is being planted in England, and must inaugurate pro- gress there as it has done here. INVESTIGATORS AND THEIR CLAIMS. In what I have said, I do not wish to attribute all the honor of our present position to Ameri- can investigation or American originality. We have no scientist who can claim any range of investigation concerning milk and its products that will at all compare with those made by Dr. Voeleker of London. The •* Germ Theory " be- Jonars to Hallur and Pasteur, and nothing new in this direction can be claimed by Americans. It is true we are indebted to Prof. Caldwell, of Cornell, for first expounding this theory to American dairymen. The weight of his author- ity as a believer in it has had considerable influ- ence with dairymen toward the acceptance of Pasteur's theory and applying it in some of the problems concerning milk. Microscopical investigations to bring out re- sults worthy of credit, require the eye and the mind of the trained scientist, great patience, long experience, and a peculiar aptitude for the work. It is one thing to look through a micro- scope, but quite another thing to be able to des- ignate correctly what one sees. Hence the ob- servation of the mere tyro must be taken with due caution. Our best cheese as now made, is in all its es- sential principles the same as that originated in Somersetshire, and which has been in practice for more than a hundred years at the loot of the Mendiss Hills. All theories in vogue from time to time diverging from their principles have ultimately proved failures. You will say that, we have been improving the character of American cheese for the last ten years or more, or that it never suited the Ens:- lish market so well as now. I trrant it, but it is because we have come nearer and nearer the true chedder method which was first made known to our dairymen at their convention in 1865. I do not now refer to appliances for abridg- ing labor— then of course an original American invention, but I have yet to be shown a simrle original scientific principle that has been discov- ered and adopted by which our cheese manufac- ture has been improved above the old chedder method. The lesson which our dairymen are learning to-day is that, there is a difference between speculative theories and sound practice. We have learned the reason for many dairy opera- tions and these have been so well expounded from time to time that our cheese makers have become better grounded in the science of the dairy, and are more intelligent than the great mass of practical dairymen in Europe. But there are some things, concerning the care and preservation of milk that may be placed to our credit. The cooling and aeration of milk for its better flavor and condition is ours. Mr. Foster, of Oueida, N. Y., was the first to discover that the odor of putrifying animal matter like that of a dead horse may taint the milk in the bag by being breathed by the cow while at pasture. The microscopical investiga- tions of Prof. Law, of Cornell, were the first to show how vegetable organisms may be trans- mitted to the milk from the water which oows drink to slake thirst. Mr. Truman, of Chenango county, was the first to dis- cover that other fat than that obtained from the milk may be substituted for it in cheese. The late Gail Borden, of White Plains, N. Y., was the first to show how milk may be successfully eliminated of its water or condens- ed. He was an original thinker and investiga- tor, whose name next to Jesse Williams will go down to posterity as the inventor ol the grand- est improvements in connection with the dairy known in any age of the world. The preserva- tion of milk in all its integrity for Ions? periods, before Mr. Borden's time, had been attempted, but without success, and eminent chemists and scientists had pronounced the condensing of milk with its cream unseparated an impossibil- ity. Mr. Borden persevered inventing elabor- ate and complicated machinery entirely original for the purpose, and at last his efforts were crowned with success. Thousands of our sol- diers during the Rebellion— thousand*, upon shipboard— in cities and upon the plains, have called down blessings upon this man tor the ben- efaction ot securing to them the luxury of pure milk— milk which could not otherwise be had. If the Jives of children saved in our cities by the use of Borden's condensed milk be taken into account, we shall scarcely be able to estimate the value of his labors. His inventions and pro- cesses have been carried into Europe, and he is recognized in history to-day as one who has dune an important servico for humanity. Mr. Slaughter, of Orange County, was the first to adopt the associated system of butter making, and to apply the deep setting of milk in coid water for getting the cream. This was an important step toward progress. The Swedes and Danes were the first among European na- tions to c»py the American idea of butter fac- tories and the 8"tting of milk in cokl water ; but Sweden with her scientists under Royal patron- age was not content simply to copy, and to Swe- den belongs the credit of first demonstrating that cream will rise rapidly and perfectly when the milk is reduced to near the freezing point iu ice water. This principle has been a surprise to the butter dairymen of America, and is another step in the progress of butter dairying. Mr. Harrlin. of Kentucky, is entitled to credit for a modification of this system in which the air is cooled in refrigerator boxes which are used for setting the milk, and he claims as an improvement the covering of the milk and the exclusion of the air while the cream is rising. There can be no doubt but the cold theory is the true one for making butter. It arrests de- composition from the start, and the fine quality of butter made by t his plan is proof of its merit. The heating of milk and then cooling it, to ob- tain the cream together with the manufacture of the skimmed milk into cheese is of ancient origin. It bad been practiced in Devonshire, England, for more than a century, and hence no claim can be made of its being an American idea. The English experimentors years ago pronounced it inferior to other methods then in common use both as to quantity and quality of product. In closing the claims of American inventors, I must add two more names to the list, that of Dr. Sturtevant, of Massachusetts, who has made some original investigations in regard to the milk globules of cows of different breeds, while Dr. H. A. Mott, of New York City, has recently made some very interesting discoveries in com- paring the milk of different races. His analyses show that the milk of the Black race contains more milk solids than that of the Caucassian, particularly in milk, sugar, fat and inorganic salts. The same rule also applies to Brunettes, and it becomes an interesting question whether the color of animals is any indication as to the quality of milk yielded. CONCLUSION. In conclusion a word may be offered in regard to the present status of American dairying. Com- missioner Wells in his celebrated report upon the " Industry, Trade and Commerce of the United States" for 1869, puts the value of the products from the dairy in the United States at $400,000,- 000 per annum. If that be correct for 1869, the annual product from dairy farms to-day must be at least. $600,000,000. The New York Butter and Cheese Exchange estimates the annual butter crop at 1,400.000,000 pounds, which at 30 cents per pou