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‘ UNITED STATES OF AMBRICA.

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HON. JAMES W. WALL
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OF NEW JERSEY,

BEFORE THE

MONTGOMERY COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

OCTOBER 4, 1860.

PHILADEPHIA:
J. B. CHANDLER, PRINTER, 306 & 308 CHESTNUT STREET, [GIRARD BUILDING.]

1860.

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ADDRESS.

Farmers of Montgomery—

Aristomenes after his unsuccessful defence of Hina against the
Lacedemonians, carried with him some sacred pledges, said by the
Delphic oracle to contain the fate of Messena. Beneath this oracular
response of the god was concealed the great and useful truth that
the safety and prosperity of this warlike people never could be
secured until they had beaten their swords into plowshares and
their spears into pruning hooks, for these sacred pledges were
nothing more than leaden plates on which were engraved the labors
and services of the goddesses Ceres and Proserpine; in a word,
simple treatises upon the arts of Agriculture and Horticulture over
which these deities were supposed to preside. The talismanic pro-
perties of these leaden sheets consisted not in any divine power
they possessed, but in the benefits to be conferred upon this warlike
people by the abandonment of their fierce struggles and the sedu-
lous and diligent cultivation of those arts, the secret of whose
power lay hid within the folds of these leaden sheets. Thus early
did even the sacred oracles of Greece surround with an importance
commensurate with their dignity and value these noble arts, whose
cultivators are this day all around me, and whose triumphs in the

4

field, the garden and the homestead, have gladdened the eyes and
made proud the hearts of the farmers of Montgomery; and upon
whose judicious and wholesome patronage the present prosperity of
the old Keystone State so much depends, and her continued great-
ness can alone be secured.

But while Greece spoke through her oracles, and gave the stamp,
“‘the stamp and signet of the god,” to the importance of the culti-
vation of these noble arts, Rome in the example of the noblest of
her sons, gave high and practical exemplification of the importance
she attached to the industrious pursuits of the tiller of the soil.

Nothing is so familiarized to the mind of the school boy, or
lingers longer in his memory, than the fact of her generals, states-
men, dictators and emperors, tilling their own paternal acres, leaving
them with reluctance for State service, and retiring to them with
gladness. Visions come and go, of that prevailing plowman who, at
the call of country, “left his plowshare in the furrow, hastened to
the field, met and conquered the foe:” so that the slant rays of
the very next sunset gilded his triumphal banners as he entered
Rome; and then before the rays of the next morning had empur-
pled the earth, was driving his team afield “with such rapidity,”
says the Roman annalist, “by all the gods, that one might say
he only hastened home to get his plowing done.”

We have, too, Cicero as authority for the fact ‘that couriers
were first introduced by the high officials,’ to run between the
Capitol and their farms, that they might not leave them except on
State occasions.

Virgil in his Georgics describes all the rural economy of the age
with a relish that is felt in every line. I may safely say that with
scarcely an exception, in all matters of rural management, in all
kinds of farming stock, sheep, cattle and horses, he would be pro-
nounced by every farmer present, a most competent judge: while
his rules for the cultivation of fields and gardens would serve for
studies here, notwithstanding the difference in American and Italian
climate. But it is only in that celebrated passage commencing

“QO fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint,
Agricolas,”

5

in his second Georgic, that he appears to be carried away with
enthusiasm in depicting the serene pleasures of a farmer’s life.

“QO, happy if he knew his happy state,
The swain who, free from business and debate,
Receives his generous food from nature’s hand,
And just returns of cultivated land,
While in his easy and secure retreat
He leads a harmless life, and knows no cheat;
With home-bred plenty he is always blest,
While rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvexed by quarrels, undisturbed by noise,
The country king, his peaceful realm enjoys.”

The accomplished Cicero in his work upon the Delights of Old
Age, seems as if he never could have done talking about the plea-
sures of farming, and closes a most glowing description of its enjoy-
ments, with this vigorous passage: “And what do these noble hus-
bandmen reply when asked for what purpose they dig and plant?
Why, simply this—in obedience to the immortal gods, by whose
bountiful providence we received these fields from our ancestors,
and whose will it is that we should deliver them unimpaired and
with improvement, to our posterity.”

Farmers of Montgomery—lIt is hardly necessary for me to incur
the charge of pedantry, by alluding at greater length to the dignity
and importance of the profession you pursue in the opinion of the
ancients. I have but sketched for you in faint and meagre outline,
the high vantage ground your profession obtained in ages long since
sped, in order to make still more manifest to you that in this
remarkable age of the world, surrounded by all the appliances that
science has conferred upon labor, the farming profession lags behind,
or follows with a limping foot, instead of being in the vanguard
of them all. And the reason is that you, Virgil’s “country kings,”’
the independent yeomanry of the State, who call no man master,
who own and till its bread and fertile acres, have closed your eyes
to the immense influencé, your intelligence, your fumbers, your
social position, and your important interests would enable you to
wield in the affairs of the State, if you would only resolve to
exercise it In a proper manner.

6

When you consider the immense importance and value of your
profession to the present and future prosperity of your State,
one would expect to find upon your statute book more legislative
enactments intended to encourage and advance so important a State
interest.

This omission has mainly grown out of the indifference and
neglect of the class most injured by it. The past you cannot
redeem, but the future is with you, the men of the plow, the men of
toil, the dandwehr of the State.

You can, representing as you do, nearly eighty per cent. of the
population, if you will only awake to your own interests, mould, -
shape and direct its future legislation as you please.

You should send hereafter to your legislative halls, men who
affiliate with you, men who drive the plow, and wield the scythe and
delve the earth. Men who have an interest in the soil they till,
upon whose clear common sense you can confide, whose patriotism
has been tested, and whose honesty you know.

United in action as in purpose throughout the State, with your
numbers, your local influence, you have it in your power to send
men to your legislative halls, who will build up permanently the
agricultural interests of your State—open up the soil to more
thorough geological research—establish agricultural schools in
almost every congressional district, endowed with State patron-
age—and promote by all honorable and judicious means the cultiva-
tion of those sciences that have done so much for agriculture, by
the continued expansion of its field of operation, and the wondrous
increase of its means of usefulness.

As far as regards enconragement to our farming interests, we are
far behind continental Europe. In this country every interest seeks
protection, clamors for it, and our political hustings are made the
theatres upon which cunning politicians play their parts as the paid
and interested advocates of such interests, while the great agricul-
tural interest is comparatively neglected.

In monarchfil Prussia they boast of at least five Agricultural
Colleges, whose object it is to instruct young farmers who have
already a preparatory knowledge acquired at the primary agricul-
tural schools, in the physical sciences as applied to agriculture, and

~ 7

in agriculture itself with its associated branches of industry. These
academies are each provided with a chemical laboratory, a library,
collections of natural history, and philosophy. To these institutions
are attached nearly nine thousand acres of land, all under scientific
cultivation. There they have established eighteen preparatory
schools, where the first rudiments of agricultural science are taught
to those who desire to prepare themselves for entrance into the five
Agricultural Colleges. In France, there are numerous schools
assisted by the State, where young persons can obtain instruction
in agriculture both practical and theoretical. The principal institu-
tion of this kind is at Grignon, where one of the old royal palaces,
and the domain attached to it consisting of nearly two thousand
acres of arable pasture, wood and marsh land, have been relin-
quished by the State.

Indeed, there is scarcely a country in Europe where the important
art of agriculture is not sheltered and encouraged by State patron-
age. And while I do not deny that our national government has
done something in the right direction, it is high time that our State
governments had done more.

I know I may be met by that enemy of progress, the oft repeated
objection, that encouragement of this nature is hostile to the spirit
and genius of republican institutions, and should be left to the per-
severance and energy of private enterprise. I have lived long
enough to be entirely satisfied with the fallacy of this political pos-
tulate. I have lived long enough to feel grieved at the tendency of
our State governments, to become mere political machines, devoted
to the business of advancing the interests of this or that partisan,
or for turning outlaws for the benefit of private, or what is worse,
electioneering capital. Now the great object of a Republican
Government I take to be: “The regulation of the public affairs in
accordance with the wishes of the people, and in conformity with
the real interests of the State.” I believe that theoretically the
aim of all governments should be, the conservation of human rights,
and the continued preservation of, and protection to the interests of
the commonweal. Government should be the conservator of every
thing tending to advance and improve humanity. It is “the min-
ister of God to thee for good,” or should be. And this divinity

8

of government is nowhere made more manifest than in this prin-
ciple, requiring it to stand up in advance of the people, directing
them and legislating for them in whatever affects their real interests
as a whole people. It is the State’s organic judgment and will, tts
eye and its hand to secure for the State both by its wisdom and its
power, the highest weal of man. Governments are but instruments
in the hands of man for human good, and when they become subver-
sive of this end, it is high time to alter or abolish them. Upon you
the farmers of Pennsylvania depends the correction of the evils that
have grown up in your State legislation. Crafty politicians call
you the bone and sinew of the land, and you will remain that and
nothing more, if you continue blind to your own power and influ-
ence in the State.

When I think of your numbers in the land, your power in every
township and district, I honestly believe, that by a concentration of
action, your strength would be greater than all the industrial pur-
suits combined. But now your power seems to be like the restrained
and controlled influence of the elephant in the menagerie. The
politicians use you and abuse you; they pierce you with sharp goads,
and they ride upon your trunks with impunity. Whereas, if you
were but fully alive to the fact of your real power, how soon would
you crush them at a blow, and trample them under foot.

I have seen enough to enable me to make the observation, and
had experience enough of their dishonest machinations to give it
some weight, that the injury done to a State by plotting politicians,
can only be compared, to use Swift’s words, “to the ravages of
swine in well cultivated fields.” While an honest farmer, who by
skilful draining, manuring and planting, has increased the intrinsic
value of an acre of land, is worth all the politicians that ever were
spawned from the brain of faction.

Why just look at it—pause for a moment and scan the nature of
the political strife by which the country is convulsed with almost the
throes of an earthquake, and is it not a most ludicrous re-enactment
of those fierce struggles in Blefuscu, related in Gulliver’s Travels,
between the Big Endians and the Little Endians. Those who will
break their eggs at the,big end, and those who prefer and will go to
the stake rather than break their eggs at the little end. For really

9

the questions at issue among the factions do not appear to me to be
of much more graver moment. Which is the convenient end of this
great slavery ege that has been laid in our day, seems difficult to
determine, and hence the pother that is kept up on every side. The
strife and struggle of Blefuscu behold revived in our day.

Farmers of Montgomery—Once more have you gathered from
every section of your county to keep your annual festival and
jubilee.

Greece for a thousand years summoned to her Olympian festivals,
beneath the graceful porticoes and shady groves of Elis, all who
bore the Grecian name. They gathered there from every kingdom
under heaven—from the islands of the sea—from the colonies that
her hands had planted—from war-like Macedonia, and from sacred
Delphos, from rocky Doria, and flower crowned Ionia—to greet once
more their ancient mother, and meet like loving children round the
family altar to enkindle afresh the noblest feelings of the soul. The
Grecian Olympiad was a common bond of allegiance and re-union.
While ostensibly it was but an exhibition for the display of physical
vigor in the numerous games that pleased the public eye, and nerved
and stimulated the youthful ambition to excel, it had really a much
more elevated object and meaning. It was in fact the grand central
point, where philosophers, sophists, statesmen, poets and husband-
men assembled, that they might compare observations, and devise
the ways and means of facilitating intercourse, and diffusing useful
knowledge, while one or more pronounced discourses upon the pro-
gress of civilization and humanity.

So here, and at your numerous Agricultural festivals throughout
the State. Pennsylvania assembles all who wear the Pennsylvania
name. They come up from every township and district, bearing
proudly with them the rich products of their fields—the ingenious
specimens of the skill and industry of the loved ones of their own
homes and firesides—their choicest cattle, and the fairest of their
flocks—together with those numerous agricultural implements that
modern ingenuity has devised for easing the yoke of labor. They
come from their rural homes to their delightful festivals to exchange
greetings with their brethren—to talk over the results of the last
year’s farming—to compare notes about this or that mode of culture—

10

to examine critically this or that improved stock—and to admire on
every side, the astonishing products, which a generous soil aided by
experience and culture, has poured out in such rich abundance.

Let me to-day in what remains of this discourse, imitate the cus-
tom of the Grecian Olympiad, by speaking of the progress of hu-
manity and civilization, and show in brief the contributions made
by the stirring age in which we live to the improvement of the agri-
cultural art.

The age in which we live has been pre-eminently marked by the
wonders that have been wrought in the subjugation of the material
world to the uses and purposes of humanity, and its most startling
intellectual advancement.

And this great mind movement is characterized by its practical
tendency. The age of the ancient school men is over, and the public
of our day expect from its thinkers and experimentalists, not clever
paradoxes or ingenious puzzles, but the best, the surest and the
shortest method of grappling with obstinate realities. Philosophers
have ceased to speculate in retirement upon unsubstantial air drawn
theories. Science is no longer an abstraction floating above the
heads of the multitude. It has descended to earth—it walks with
men—it penetrates the bowels of the earth—it enters our workshops.
It analyzes the soil upon our farms, and the chemical constituents of
the atmosphere above them. It traces with faithful minuteness the
organic elements that enter into the composition of our plants, and
makes manifest how those elements are held together by a kind of
balance of opposite attractions, and which remain united only so
long as that balance is retained. It speeds the iron courser of the
rail. It tramples upon the billows. It defies the tempest. It gives
to man the sun-beam for a pencil, and the lightening for a messen-
ger. It lends to man’s feeble arm an irresistible might, before which
mountains crumble into dust, the barriers of kingdoms are removed.

What is there in the recorded dreams of Arabian fancy, more
wonderful than the force and enduring power of steam agency. How
stupendous its power, and yet how manageable! A child may direct
it. It would crush an army. A single touch puts in motion the
gigantic ship that can bear upon its deck the population of the city,
or stow within its hold the freightage of a nation’s wealth. Un-

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affected by time, place, circumstance or fatigue there stands this
universal servant of man, ready to relieve him from all drudgery
and to assist his limited ability in carrying out the intentions of -his
will. In Webster’s glowing words: “It seems to say to men, at
least to artizans, leave off your manual labor, bestow but your skill
and reason to the direction of my power: and I will bear the toil,
with no muscle to grow weary, no nerve to relax, no breast to feel
faintness.”’

But even the subtle influences of caloric, which thus animate the
inert waters with titanic might, fail to excite our astonishment to as
great a degree as those marvels recently produced by electric
agency.

Look at those wires as they stretch along by your great rail-lines.
They appear perfectly quiescent. The weary bird rests upon them,
and clasps them in its tiny claws. Yet along that motionless thread
and through that feeble grasp, there may be passing tidings of life
or death, ruin or prosperity, intelligence of the fall of kings and
thrones, of battles lost and won, of events that change the destinies
of the world, plunging whole nations into mourning, or intoxicating
them with joy.

A thousand fathoms beneath the keel of the war ship, undisturbed
by the tumult of the elements in which she reels and struggles, in
the dark and silent abysms of ocean where uncouth monsters hide,
where human vision has never penetrated, there shall lie the won-
drous ligature connecting the minds of nations, conveying manifold
contributions to the sum of human wisdom and experience: and from
the humanizing operations of which man shall yet learn to still his
mimic thunders, and aspire after higher and brighter glories than
those won at Magenta and Solferino. ‘The electric fire that glides
along this ligature shall scorch away the differences of race and na-
tion, when man shall cease to learn war any more. This globe of
ours is yet to be transformed by this wondrous agency into one vast
human head, these magic wires like interlacing nerves, universalizing
and harmonizing every sensation and every thought.

It was out of the passing whirl-wind came the mysterious voice
that asked of suffering Job: ‘ Canst thou send lightnings, that they
may go and say unto thee here we are?” The power denied to the

12

age in which the patriarch lived, has for some wise purpose of the
Infinite been reserved for the men of this generation, who have not
only found out the path of the lightning, and can send it on its hu-
man mission; but, Prospero like, have caught in passing, the northern
Ariels, those merry dancers of the skies, who light their torches in
our northern zones, and compelled even these ‘“tricksy sprites” to do
their bidding.

And in this great mind movement by which our age is peculiarly
distinguished, evinced in the rapid development of the hitherto
unknown laws of nature, and the successful application of those
laws, so as to make them contribute to man’s comfort and happiness,
the Agriculturist has not been forgotten.

Agriculture now has become a pursuit which to prosecute to its
full capacity, the arts and the sciences of modern times must be
made to bear upon and co-operate with it, so as to add something
to its progression, or to apply beneficially the knowledge of its
already established principles and practices.

Science in descending from her high places in this age, has taken
agricultural labor by the hand, that they may walk together over
the earth’s surface and through the fields, while they search out
the causes of things.

Geology in this wondrous age reveals to the intelligent husband-
man that the solid earth whose surface he tills, and that bears upon
its stalwart breast the cyclopean masonry of the granite and lime-
stone mountains, was once held in aqueous solution, and its sub-
stance as impressible as the sand from which the ocean wave has
just retired. She points him to the delicate markings, the foot-
prints and impressions of organic animal structures hardened in the
solid rock, as proof of the once soluble condition of the earth. She
builds up for him the great globe itself, by a regular succession and
continuity of strata, each presenting its own particular organisms,
establishing the important fact that there has been a systematic and
progressive succession of life in the ancient world, and preserving
as In some curious museum, the specimens of organic life that
existed at each period of deposition, manifesting that God’s power
on the earth has not been limited to the two thousand years of
man’s existence. Geology counts the age of the earth not by celes-

13

tial cycles, but by an index found in the solid frame-work of the
globe itself. It points to a long succession of monuments, each of
which may have required myriads of years for its elaboration. It
arranges them in chronological order, observes in them marks of
skill and wisdom, finds within them the vast cemeteries of the suc-
cessive inhabitants of the earth—tracing the changes backward
through successive eras of development, until the time when the
‘“‘earth was without form, and darkness rested upon the face of the
deep.” This brilliant science attests that man was the last of
created beings upon this planet. Through centuries and ages of
creative activity, there is not the faintest trace of his presence,
his footsteps, or his handiwork. In all the pages of this stony
volume wherever it has hitherto been unfolded, there is no reliable
record of man. And yet how sublime the thought that here
suggests itself of man’s importance and of a Creator’s love, when
the truth leaps forth from such scientific revelation that all this crea-
tive energy and intelligence were exerted only to prepare a fit habi-
tation for the coming man. ‘The flint of your mountains, the marl
that fertilizes your fields and makes wave with golden harvests—
the rich abounding treasures of your coal fields, are but evidences of
that divine forecast which thus deposited the remains of animal and
vegetable life, that by decomposition and transformation should be
made to minister for all time, to the wants of the coming ruler who
was “to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the
air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and everything that creepeth
upon the face of the earth.’’ ‘This noble science which thus tells the
interesting story of the earth’s past career, marking its epochs by
revolutions which have repeatedly submerged, elevated and dislo-
cated its frame work, has in a remarkable degree made itself subser-
vient to the great art of Agriculture. .

It shows this earth with its huge mass resting on its primary
strata, where the granite and the gneiss, the limestone and the slate
have their beds. It points to the transition period when tropical
vegetation, under the influence of tropical heat, gave birth to the
ancient Flora of the earth, rank and luxuriant, whose decay accu-
mulated that vast amount of carbonaceous matter now ministering
so much to the comfort and prosperity of man—those immense coal

14

deposits, out of whose subterranean treasure houses comes the sub-
stance that enlivens your hearth-stones, prepares your food, furnishes
light to your dwelling, and is fast becoming the essential agent of
that mighty power of steam, upon which modern locomotion, the in-
creasing value of the products of your farms and manufactures so
much depends.

And we may well pause here to admire that wise mercy which has
thus provided so inexhaustible a field of fuel at the time it was most
needed, and in the very localities it was most required. And yet it
is no slight proof of the patience and majesty of the procession of
the divine will, that it has only been within a comparatively short
time that man has been enabled to understand the object of this
great contrivance. Those huge cone-bearing trees, those rich and
varied mosses, that flowerless and fruitless vegetation, so luxuriant
and so immense, which, ages before the creation of man, covered so
large a space of your own State. For what were they meant?
And those layers of black stone cropping out from the hill side in
more modern times, what object have they? But now the answer
comes in the hum of. thousands of steam engines, in the flash of
thousands of forges, in the light round thousands of hearth-stones,
and the whirr of myriads of spindles.

With unerring certainty geology points the Agriculturist to that
tertiary formation where the marine strata are deposited, to which
the rivers, lakes, floods and seas of the ancient world contributed.
Here you find the grand depositories where are laid up the fat and
unctuous marls and green sand which have proved such efficient fer-
tilizers of the soil in our alluvial districts.

You come to the surface, to the soil you cultivate, and geological
science shows you its derivation from the original primary rocks,
which by convulsions, changes and repeated disintegrations, has been
the better fitted for the purposes of tillage and cultivation. It
teaches the Agriculturist how to divine the character of the upper
soil from the rocks beneath it. In some places you meet with sand-
stone, in other places lime-stone, in others slate or hardened clay
and rock, hence your sandy soils, your clay and your calcareous
soils. Thus the modern intelligent Agriculturist seeking a locality
for settlement, by the aid of this useful science is now enabled to

15

say—by the geological structure of this section of country, here I
shall have the more permanent productive soil, here I will be within
the reach of more agricultural improvement. Here in addition to
the riches of the surface, my descendants may hope to derive the
means of wealth from the mineral riches beneath. !

But geology is not the only science that comes to teach the agri-
culturist the nature of the various elementary constituents of bodies,
and the laws regulating their combination in the inorganic and non-
vital world; while animal and vegetable physiology instruct him in
the constituents of organic or vital beings. Chemistry discloses to
him the existence of deleterious gases in the atmosphere, while
vegetable physiology most beautifully demonstrates how the leaves
of the plants are the lungs by which they breathe, and appropriate
these deleterious gases which are retained by them, while oxygen
go necessary to man’s vitality is thrown off by them to purify and
exhilerate the atmosphere. So thus by an arrangement, whose wis-
dom is apparent, the vegetable and animal kingdom are made to
contribute mutually to each other’s support. Nay, they are essen-
tial to each other’s existence. Destroy the gnymal reign, and the
vegetable will speedily perish for the want of its proper nutriment.
Eradicate the vegetable cover of the earth, and the very air we
breathe will lose that element by which life alone exists.

Chemistry reveals to the intelligent agriculturist how certain
elements of the inorganic world contain nitrogen, phosphorus, soda
and lime; while vegetable physiology beautifully makes manifest
how the living organism of the plant, when such substances in the
shape of natural or artificial manures are brought to its roots,
through these vegetable mouths imbibes the liquid nourishment that
the rains wash down,—nature, by her secret process, so combining
them as to form stem, leaves and flowers.

Vegetable physiology makes apparent to him that as the blood is
to the life of man, so the sap in vegetables is the vital current, which
circulating through their veins and arteries, is necessary for the
maintenance and increase of their frames; and as this nourishing
fluid is being constantly consumed, chemistry analyzes it, and shows
him what elements enter into its formation. It makes manifest how
this vital fluid contains all the elements out of which the structure

16

of the plant is composed, while carbon, hydrogen and oxygen enter
materially into its formation. Then vegetable physiology shows to
a demonstration how certain plants derive all these gases from the
atmosphere—their carbon from its carbonic acid—their hydrogen
from its moisture—and their nitrogen from the gleaming lightning,
that shedding its lucid glare during the passing thunder shower
gives down this important element, which coming in contact with
earth’s substances, produces that vigor in vegetation which is the
certain accompaniment of the summer shower, so that in fact the
electric magazines of the skies coming in contact with earth’s sub-
stances are continually engaged in the manufacture of those nitrates
of potash, of soda, or of lime, that form such important ingredients
in your best manures.

In fact the science of vegetable physiology to one who studies it
aright, may be said to reveal the sublime and exalted mission of
humanity. For though of the earth, earthy, it symbolizes in the
immutable laws of vegetable life, the spiritual ordinance of that
which is yet to be for man in the great hereafter.

It in truth makgg manifest

“ Flow creation’s soul is thrivance from decay,
And nature feeds on ruin; the big earth
Summers in rot, and harvests through the frost
To fructify the world; the mortal now
Is pregnant with the spring flowers of to come,
And death is seed time of eternity.”

It clearly reveals how the immutable laws of vegetable nature
decrees that death shall proceed out of life, and life out of death ;
that the living animal shall draw its vitality from the dead plant,
and the living plant from the dead animal; that decomposition must
be but the commencement of recomposition, and putrifaction but the
symbol of renewed production. The brave apostle to the Gentiles,
preaches this beautiful truth. ‘‘ But some will say, how are the dead
raised up, and with what body do they come? Thou fool! That which
thou sowest is not quickened except it die ;’’ and how like a light from
heaven it bursts upon the darkness of the tomb; and how often it
has comforted the stricken mourners, as with wildly beating hearts

iF

they heard that fearful miserere of the last service of the church,
‘arth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Man decays and ages move, and in the long course of centuries
the very fibres and tissues of this mortal frame, the sinews that have
toiled, and the brain that has thought, may reappear in the emerald
leaf of the oak, or the painted wing of the insect. Decay is only
apparent, no atom is lost, not a single molecule destroyed, and the
very signs and tokens of dissolution are but parts of a gigantic sys-
tem, wherein death is the very condition of life. It is therefore no
paradox to say that life could not exist without death; vitality and
decay, production and corruption, formation and destruction, are
so intimately and mutually dependent, that their reciprocal and com-
pensatory action alone maintains the equilibrium of our natural sys-
tem and the essential conditions of our well being.

And is not this too the great truth that history teaches in the
progress of the political world? Has not the dissolution of old
forms of government been but a preparation for new phases of
humanity. Dynasties may die out, and forms of government be
changed, but the great law of reconstruction fixom, is still apparent,
and the ruins of States and Empires become like the falling of the
leaves in autumn, manuring the soil, and preparing it for the growth
of richer vegetation and more abundant harvests,

Nor is this wondrous truth of reconstruction from decay the only
marvel that reveals itself to the earnest student of vegetable phy-
siology. Amongst the wondrous analogies disclosed by it in the
animal and vegetable kingdom, none are more astonishing than that
curious discovery of sexes in the higher order of plants—making
manifest how by the impregnation of the germ in one sex, that germ
is converted into a seed, and how that seed if placed in the ground,
in a condition where it can have health and support, becomes the
perfect plant. So that calm race, the flowers, all loveliness and
tranquility, whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume, play
no idle part in nature’s workshop—for to them is in reality com-
mitted the task of perpetuating not only vegetable, but animal life.
Upon their active industry depends the life of every bird that soars
in air, of the cattle on a thousand hills, of every insect crawling in

9

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18

the dust—aye, of the very life of man himself. As England’s
laureate poet asks :

“Who is it that could live an hour
If nature put not forth her power,
About the opening of a flower.”

Look too at the beautiful revelation vegetable physiology gives us
of the superintending love that watches over all things from the least
to the greatest. See how kindly nature with a mother’s instructive
love and tenderness surrounds the germ before it is separated from
the parent flower with nutritive matter, the starch, the gluten and
albumen, which shall form its future food when the parent flower
dies, the carpel splits, and the seed is free. And learn too nature’s
ingenuity, when you note the little wing-like expansions on the sides
of the new born seed, that it may the more easily waft it to some
distant place, where it is to lie feeding on its own stores, until
exposed to warmth and moisture, and the oxygen of the air, it shall
burst its seed coats, and commence its active existence.

But the science of vegetable physiology stands not alone in the
valuable contributions it has made to the art of the husbandman.
Chemistry, as every intelligent farmer knows, has in a most remark-
able degree advanced the agricultural interests of the world.

As a science, it is of comparatively late origin; and yet how diffi-
cult it is to fully realize the extent to which in that short period it
has contributed to the comfort, prosperity and luxury of the world.

When in the latter part of the last century, the focus of Priestley’s
burning lens, evolved from the common red precipitate bubbles of
gas, identical with that which supports life, who could have supposed,
that by freeing one of the metals from its companion element, the
composition of many of the most useful ores would have been
detected, and a hint furnished, which was to bring the whole metal-
lurgic art to a system of rigid and practical economy. Or who
could have been presuming enough, when his nostrils first caught
the suffocating odors produced by the German Chemist’s operations
on the acid of sea salt, to have then predicted that this discovery
would introduce a total revolution in the manufacture of paper and

i]

linen textures, and a vast variety of objects. Or when the chemists
of the last century observed the discoloration and degradation which
certain metallic salts underwent in the sunlight, who would have
ventured the prediction, that the sun in our day should place a
pencil in the hands of Daguerre and Talbot, that should make the
highest efforts of the painter’s skill, poor in the comparison? Or
when the French philosopher, not half a century ago, perceived the
disturbance of the magnetic needle produced by a neighboring gal-
vanic current, who could have conceived that from this circumstance
science would conjure up a spirit that would outstrip the fairy Oberon
in ‘putting a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.”

But great indeed as are these contributions to the sum total of
human comfort and prosperity, we very much doubt whether in
practical everyday usefulness they have not been equalled by those
which chemistry has made to agriculture, and that, too, within a
recent period. i

It is within the memory of most of us, when the application of
this science to Agriculture was first efficiently made. It was only
the other day that Liebig made the first successful attempt to im-
prove agricultural resources, when he suggested on theoretic grounds
alone, the addition of sulphuric acid to bones, as a means of render-
ing them when used, more soluble, so that the spongioles of the
thirsty plant might the more easily appropriate the liquid nourish-
ment.

But the intelligent farmer of to-day who has learned through the
development of this science great and useful truths, truths of which
he never dreamed before, is ready to acknowledge his indebted-
ness. He knows that with a knowledge of geology, vegetable
physiology and chemistry, he is much better enabled to realize upon
his farm the full advantages of its culture, from his knowledge of
the soil, the organism of plants, and the nature of the food that will
best perfect such organism.

The farmer of one idea—the man who in this age despises book
farming as he contemptuously styles it, is ever like the man with the
muck rake in Pilgrim’s Progress, looking downward, and never
desiring to extend the range of his vision. He is as one who is con-
tent to stick to the old Troy coach in preference to the many more

20

certain and expeditious modes of locomotion. Experience has done
much, and will do more for the farmer. But experience after all, is
but the dim glimpse of truth, like the religious faith men had before
a revelation. Experience did much for the age in which old Cato
the censor lived, and in his Agricultural treatise he very properly
enjoins the young Roman farmer: ‘Beware of rashly contemning the
usages adopted by others.” That was good advice in the days of the
stern old Roman, and it is good advice now. But he who relies
upon experience alone in this age when the laws of science are
unfolding truths that experience never revealed, will find himself
going behind, and that pretty rapidly, too. Oh! but methinks I
hear one of these old fogies say—the world got along very well with-
out farming many years ago; and so they did for a time without
breeches or buttons, and much longer without the printing press or
the steam engine.

As Henry Ward Beecher very pertinently says upon this subject :
‘Ca farmer never objects to receive political information from news-
papers; he is quite willing to learn the state of the market from
newspapers, and as willing to gain religious notions from reading, and
historical knowledge, and all sorts of information except that re-
lating to his business. He will go over and hear a reading neighbor
tell how he prepares his wheat lands, how he selects and puts in his
seed, how he deals with his grounds in spring, in harvest, and after
harvest; but if a neighbor should write it down very carefully and
print it, then its all poison—its book farming.”

Farmers in this active age must use their heads as well as their
hands, and must not content themselves with simply being as wise as
their ancestors, trusting alone to experience, and despising all scien-
tific information. If they do, the farming profession will find itself
more and more in the back-ground every year, for every other pur-
suit is availing itself of all the aids that science, assisted by expe-
rience, can discover, and if Agriculture chooses to grope about in
the dark with the farthing taper ef experience, when she can avail
herself of the Drummond lights of science, she is false to her own
interests and to the age in which we live.

Let me enumerate in brief—for time warns me that I must not
trespass much longer on your attention—the benefits that have

21

resulted to Agriculture by the developments of chemistry. Those
developments have taught the Agricultural world the value of sub-
stances for manures which heretofore have been thrown aside as
worthless. They have made manifest why plants grow upon a soil
that is well manured, because such manure has added to the soil, with
the aid of the atmosphere, the elements that enter into the structure
of plants—nitrogen, phosphorus, soda, potash and magnesia. They
have taught the Agriculturist that when the natural manures fail,
artificial compounds may be resorted to, giving to the soil and the
plant something in which the first was deficient and the latter was
craving for its nourishment.

Chemical analysis may perhaps show you that your soil is deficient
in sulphur or in soda, but contains all the other substances required
by wheat. Guided by this, you apply a top-dressing of sulphate of
soda to your wheat, and the full grain in the ear almost bends to the
earth with its own weight. You find that the land you are about to
lay down in grass is deficient in nitrogen—you top-dress it with a
preparation of nitrate of soda, and a rich luxuriant crop greets the
advent of your mowing machine.

The intelligent husbandman who spreads lime upon his land
through the revelations of Agricultural chemistry, is made aware
that by this means he goes through the very process a chemist
resorts to in his laboratory to analyze the soil—that is, he liberates
the silica, the potash and the phosphates, which enable these sub-
stances the better to mingle with the soil, and administer to the de-
mands of vegetation. And he learns further, that by this liming
process he has furnished no equivalent for that removed by the
crops, and unless he restores to the soil what the lime has evolved,
his pregnant liming will only serve to burn up and exhaust it. He
learns perhaps what he never dreamed of before, that lime is not in
the ordinary sense a manure, for manuring consists strictly in the
restoration of that to the soil in which it is deficient. But lime is a
robber, and the farmer who works slovenly, contenting himself with
frequent liming, without compensation, will find that it is a spolia-
tion system, leaving his soil ultimately poor indeed.

Agricultural chemistry has further revealed to the Agriculturist
that the drought when the earth is parched, and vegetation dwarfed

22

and withered by the heat, is only an afiliction for the present, a
blessing in disguise for the future, that the early and the later rain
may perhaps produce at once abundant crops; but still dry weather
is needed to bring to the surface from the depths of the earth, food
for the future harvest; that as the drought continues, the water from
the sub-soil keeps constantly bringing to the surface the salts of
lime, of magnesia, and of potash, that it holds in solution. Thus
you are taught to see in the drought, one of nature’s ordinances for
keeping up the fertility of the soil.

The management and tilling of the soil has now become a
branch of practical chemistry, which like the art of dyeing, or lead
smelting may advance to a certain degree of perfection without the
aid of pure science: but can only have its processes explained, and
be led on to shorter, more simple, more economical and perfect pro-
cesses by the aid of scientific principles.

Nearly a century ago, a Scotch mother according to Sir Walter
Scott, objected to her sons using on the farm what she called a new-
fangled machine for dighting the grain from the chaff—thus impiously
raising wind by human art, instead of soliciting it by prayers. We
wonder what that good old Scottish woman would have exclaimed
could she have been spared to our times, to witness the increasing
triumphs of mind over matter, and the almost complete subjugation
of the physical elements to an intellectual sovereign. Surely, if in
any department man hath sought out many inventions, it has been
in the department of Agriculture with your patent horse hoes, and
with your steam ploughs, your centre draft ploughs for sand and
for clay soils, your side hill and subsoil ploughs, your reaping, mow-
ing and threshing machines, your revolving wheel and hay rakes,
your patent sowing and planting machines, you have a mass of
labor-saving machinery, that must excite the wonder of the farmer
who tilled the land a quarter of a century ago.

Such are the wonders of the remarkable age in which we live.
Such the contributions made by science to Agriculture. Living then
in this progressive age, it is hardly necessary for me to say, that it
is the duty of all classes in such a noble State as Pennsylvania, to
gain by every means in their power, all the benefits within their
reach. We have been heaving to-day the log into the deep, and

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2

measuring the rapidity of the current by which the world is borne
along. You cannot stop it if you would, and you ought not if you
could, nor can you stand idly by trusting to the strength of the an-
cient moorings by which your vessel is made fast; for against such
a current the stoutest cables will give way, the strongest vessel drag
her anchors. Your duty, and the duty of all of us, is to strive to
turn in the best direction the current which is carrying us so rapidly
forward.

Farmers of Pennsylvania—Your lines have fallen indeed upon
pleasant places. Yours is truly a goodly heritage. Like the
“Children of the Promise,” you have been brought into a good
land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring
out of valleys and hills, a land wherein thou canst eat bread without
scarceness, thou canst not lack anything in it; a land whose stones
are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig coal.’’ And the
same Almighty power which gave you this goodly land to possess it;
has blest the fruit of your land, your corn, and your wine, and your
oil, and your flocks of sheep.

It is a land with rich and verdant meadows smiling beneath its
pleasant skies; with grain fields ripening for harvests that fill to the
full its groaning wains and bursting granaries, with orchards bending
to the earth with their russet, brown and golden fruitage. It is the
Keystone that locks together and holds firm in their places the
springing extremities of the glorious Arch of our Union; upon
whose patriotic strength the confederacy has relied in times past,
and which will not fail it in the future.

Such, Pennsylvania farmers is the lot of your inheritance. It is
your heritage. See to it, that you continue to own the fullness of
your debt of grateful love by the faithful discharge of your high
duties, to God, your Country, and the generations yet to come, that
it may be to you—a heritage forever.

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