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OUR AGE,

Gontrbutions to Agrientture:
AN ADDREESS,
ey oe D SEPTEMBER 16rxH, 1859,
BY JAMES W. WALL, ESQ.
At the Hew Jersey Agricultural State Fair,
HELD AT ELIZABETHPORT.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

Poet, AD Wer HA :
KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, 607 SANSOM STREET.
1859.

‘¢ Acricola incurvo terram dimovit aratro:
Hine anni labor; hine patriam parvésque nepotes,
Sustinet; hinc armenta boum, meritosque juvencos.
Nec requies, quin aut pomis exuberet annus,
Aut foetu pecorum, aut Cerealis mergite culmi;
Proventtique oneret sulcos atque horrea vincat.’’
Georgics, Lib. 2d, p. 113.

‘‘The husbandman cleaves the earth with the crooked plough; hence the
labor of the year; hence he sustains the country and his little offspring ;
hence his herds of kine and deserving steers. Nor is there any intermission,
but the year either abounds with apples, or with the breed of the flocks, or
with bundles of the stalks of Ceres; loads the furrows with increase, or
overstocks the barns.”’

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Ae. resident and Gentlemen of the State
Agricultural Society,

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FARMERS OF NEw JERSEY:

The duty devolving upon me to-day, through the
indulgent partiality of your Association, is one, that
had I consulted my calmer judgment, and relied less
upon my impulses, perhaps I should have declined.
Inexperienced as I am in all the more practical work-
ings of the gentle art of the husbandman, it certainly
does appear the most startling presumption for me to
stand up in the midst of those whose lives have been
devoted to its culture, or whose tastes have been
directed to its study and encouragement, for the pur-
pose of intruding my crude thoughts upon a subject,
with which experience and cultivation have so famil-
iarized them.

But in accepting this invitation, I did so, fully
conscious of my own deficiencies, but animated by
generous impulses, which made me feel that I should
be false to my Jersey lineage, false to the examples
that have gone before me, and forgetful of the teach-
ings of one, whose loyal heart was always full of love
for New Jersey, did I refuse to lend my aid, feeble as
it might be, to an Association that has done so much,
and is destined to do still more, for the best interests
of this my native State.

Had this Association accomplished nothing, save the
simple institution of this annual agricultural State

6

festival, it would have deserved the highest honors and
the most lasting remembrance. But when to this we
add, the devotion and energy manifested by those who
originated, or have since enrolled themselves in it, the
incalculable benefits that through such devotion and
energy have sprung from its organization, the encourage-
ment it has given to agriculture throughout the State,
the stimulus to exertion it has created, the generous
rivalry it has awakened; then and not till then are we
able to realize fully the immense advantages conferred
upon the State by its organization.

In view of all these things, how is it? and why is
it? that our legislation has done so little to foster an
Association whose sole object is the benefit of the State;
and allof whose energies have been most perseveringly
expended in advancing and encouraging her best inte-
rests, and providing for her future welfare and prospe-
rity. Not thus did the Roman state reward the efforts
of those whose labors to improve her agricultural re-
sources she thought worthy of the laurel crown, and of
the thanks of a Roman Senate. Not thus did a Roman
magistracy acknowledge the interests of the state in
this gentle art, when yearly her high official functiona-
ries went in solemn processsion to the temples of the
gods, and sometimes to the fields, to offer up prayers
for the safety of the crop, or of the cattle, and for suc-
cess in every agricultural undertaking. I would, as a
Jerseyman, that this question had not to be asked; but
the answer is an easy one, and I give it to you in all
frankness. It is because you, the independent yeomanry
of the State, who own and till its broad and fertile acres,
have shut your eyes to the immense influence which
your intelligence, your numbers, your social position,

7

and your important interests would enable you to wield
in the political affairs of the State, if you would only.
determine to exercise it in a proper manner.

The legislation of the past has done nothing, literally
nothing, for the agricultural interests of New Jersey.
That omission has mainly grown out of the indifference
and neglect of the very class most injured by it. ( The
past you cannot redeem, but the future is with yow,\the
men of the plough, the men of toil, the cultivators of
the soil you own. You can, with the awakened power
which has so long slumbered within you, mould and
shape, and direct the future legislation of the State as
you choose. The hammer of Odin is in your hands:
and as the stroke of that of the Teutonic mythology is
said to have produced convulsions upon the earth’s sur-
face, so political power in your hands, if wielded in a
high and holy purpose, shall shake terribly that old
system of inert and useless legislation, which has so long
cursed the State.

You have committed to your care the most important
interests—interests which only need judicious and foster-
ing protection at the hands of the State, to develop rich
sources of wealth, that will add materially to our pre-
sent and all future prosperity. It has been your
fault heretofore, and it will be much more your fault
hereafter, if you neglect to place high-minded, intelli-
gent men from your own ranks in our legislative halls,
who will look somewhat more after your own inte-
rests, and consequently the real interests of the State,
which are always advanced, when that art is encouraged,
of which you are the living masters.

Send hereafter to your legislative halls, men who affi-
liate with you, men who drive the plough, and wield

)

8

the scythe, and delve the earth ; men who have an inte-
rest in the soil they till; upon whose clear common sense
intelligence you can confide ; whose patriotism has been
tested, and whose honesty you know.

United in action as in purpose, you have it in your
power to send men to our legislative halls who will, by
wholesome legislation, build up the agricultural inte-
rests of your State, open up once more its soil to geolo-
gical research; who will establish agricultural schools,
endowed with State patronage; and promote by all hono-
rable and judicious means the cultivation of those sci-
ences which have already done so much for agriculture,
by the continued expansion of its field of operations,
and the wondrous increase of its means of usefulness.

It is for you to bring back the political contests of
New Jersey to the old, high and honorable standard,
when

‘¢Worth made the man,
And want of it, the fellow.”

You can, if you choose, lift them up from their fallen
state, and place them on their former high vantage
ground. Your very position makes you conservative.
If you have not large possessions to guard, you have
the will and the capacity to accumulate, in a country
where a pair of hands has been the basis of many a
fortune. Your inheritance is not a life of toil anda
pauper’s obsequies; but the fruits of industry protected
by freedom. You are the “/and-wehre,” the potentialities
of the State, whose labor “ places a roof over your heads,
a chicken in your pot, and yearly adds a field to your
farms.” Your associations have removed you from the
contaminating political atmosphere of cities; and you

9

will bring back again to our political contests what they
so much need, honesty of purpose, integrity of motive,
and freedom of action. According to the ancient my-
thology, “ Labor stood still, when Pluto broke out of hell.”

‘‘Turbatur Lipare, stupuit fornace relicta
Mulciber, et trepidus dejecit fulmina Cyclops.”

We desire that honest labor in our day, whenever the
Pluto of political corruption and degeneracy breaks
loose upon the political world, shall not imitate its pro-
totype of the ancient, by standing still; but will scourge
back to its den, so infamous, yet so potential a divinity.

Farmers of New Jersey! the future 1s in your hands.
Will you so impress your influence upon it, that the
Broad Seal of your State,—which emblemizes, with its
horse head, its triad of ploughs, its cornucopia full to
the overflow, and Liberty watching over all, the com-
plet eone-ness of State and agricultural interests,—shall
hereafter stand forth in broader and fuller relief? Let
it be to you on your banner, like the far-famed cross upon
that of Constantine—-having under it as he did, the motto,
“Tn hoc signo vinces,”—‘in this sign shall ye conquer.”

“ Liberty and Prosperity !” this is the legend, as we
read it in the scroll upon which the shield of your
Broad Seal rests. ‘These should be your watchwords.
“ Liberty!” The liberty achieved for you on your
world-renowned battle fields by Jersey farmers, and the
sons of farmers, who literally left their ploughs in the
furrow to hasten to the field. “Prosperity!” The
prosperity that follows the iron coulter of your ploughs,
with which “ you tickle the Jersey soil until it laughs
with an abundant harvest.” “ Prosperity!” The pros-
perity of the noble art you cultivate, that spreads the

10

great ard bountiful table, upon which so many of your
brethren in our own and sister States depend for their
daily food; and that ever, with inexhaustible supply,
keeps feeding all the other branches of industry.

Farmers of New Jersey! Once more have you gath-
ered from every section of the State, to keep your an-
nual agricultural festival and jubilee.

Greece, for a thousand years, summoned to her Olym-
pian festivals, beneath the graceful porticos and shady
groves of Elis, the men from every portion of the world
who bore the Grecian name. They gathered there, from
every kingdom under heaven,—from the islands of the
sea, and from the colonies that her hands had planted,—
to greet once more their ancient mother, and meet like
loving children round the family altar, to kindle afresh
the noblest feelings of the soul. The Grecian Olym-
piad was a common bond of alliance and reunion.
While ostensibly it seemed 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. It was, in fact, the grand central
point, where philosophers, sophists, statesmen, poets,
and husbandmen assembled, that they might compare
observations, and devise the ways and means of facili-
tating intercourse, and of diffusing useful knowledge ;
while one or more delivered discourses upon the pro-
gress of civilization and humanity.

So here, New Jersey assembles at this, her annual
agricultural Olympiad, all who wear the Jersy name.
You have come up to-day from the ocean seaboard,
from the rich alluvial districts of Old Cumberland and
Salem, from Burlington, Monmouth, and Mercer. ‘The

FL

men of Sussex, of Warren, of Hunterdon, of Passaic,
of Essex, and of Union, are here. You have brought
with you the rich products of your fields, the ingenious
specimens of the skill and industry of the loved ones
of your own homes and firesides, your choicest cattle
and the fairest of your flocks; together with those
numerous agricultural implements that modern inge-
nuity has devised for easing the yoke of labor, You
have come from your rural homes to this great festival,
to exchange greetings with your brethren, to talk over
the results of the last year’s farming, to compare notes
about this or that mode of culture, to examine criti-
cally 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. ;

And as, at the Grecian Olympiad, it was ever the
custom to discourse upon the progress of civilization
and humanity, so permit me, on this occasion, to take
it as the theme of my discourse, so that in all things
we may be said to imitate that ancient and most excel-
lent festival.

Each succeeding age and generation leaves behind it
some peculiar characteristic, which stands out in bold
relief upon. its annals, and is‘associated forever with it
in the memory of posterity. One age is signalized for
the invention of gunpowder, another for that of print-
ing. One is rendered memorable by the revival of let-
ters, another by the reformation of religion. One
epoch is made illustrious by the discoveries of a New-
ton, another by the conquests of a Napoleon. If we
were asked by what characteristic the present age will
be marked in the records of its successors, we should

12

answer,—by the wonders that have been wrought in
the subjugation of the material world to the uses and
purposes of humanity, and its wonderful intellectual
advancement. :

No one can contemplate our unexampled progress in
this direction during the present century, without feel-
ing that a new epoch has commenced in the history of
our race. The divine powers of the human mind are’
extending their grasp, and rising to a state of higher
activity; fields of knowledge undreamt of in the ear-
lier ages of the world are successfully cultivated; the
farthest regions of space are explored, and the secrets
of their starry depths unfolded to men. ‘The hidden
forces of Nature, the laws by which her phenomena are
governed in their endless variety and succession, the
economy of being, the structure and properties of mat-
ter, the relations of things and ideas, the very mind
itself,—all are undergoing a rigorous process of scien-
tific investigation, from’ which discoveries result that
would be deemed miraculous, did not their number and
frequency almost exhaust our faculty of wonder.

The great characteristic of this general mind move-
ment is its practical tendency. ‘The age of the ancient
schoolmen is over, and the public of our day expects
from its thinkers and experimentalists not clever para-
doxes, not ingenious puzzles carried on through an end-
less chain of infinite questions and incomprehensible
distinctions, but the best, the surest, and the shortest
method of grappling with obstinate realities. The pub-
lic mind demands from its experimentalists, discoveries
of the means by which the powers of Nature may be
brought to subdue one another, for the service of man
in his ceaseless struggles with her material elements.

13

Learning and skill are esteemed only in proportion as
they conduce to the well-being of society; and their
value is measured by the extent of their application to
the practical affairs of every-day life. Philosophers
have ceased to speculate, in retirement, upon unsub-
stantial, air-drawn theories. Science is no longer an
abstraction, floating dreamily 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 constituents of the atmosphere above them;
it traces the organic elements that enter into the com-
position of our plants, and makes manifest how those
elements are held together by a kind of balance of
opposite attractions, which remain united only when
that balance is retained. Itspeeds along with the iron
courser of the rail; it tramples on the billows; it de-
fies the tempest; it gives to man the sunbeam for a
pencil, and the lightning for a’‘messenger. It lends to
man’s feeble arm an irresistible might, before which
mountains crumble into dust, the barriers of kingdoms
are removed, estuaries and straits spanned by substan-
tial roadways, while the unstable waters, no less than
the firm land, are made subject to his dominion. The
talismans of Arabian fable never endowed their posses-
sors with such power as that which science, in our age,
has bestowed upon man. Ithas placed at his command
agents whose indefatigable energy, and adaptation to
all human wants and purposes, cast into the shade the
Genii of the Ring and of the Lamp.

What is there in the recorded dreams of fancy, more
wonderful than the force and power of steam agency,
as now developed in its various applications? How

14

stupendous in its power, and yet how manageable! A
child may direct it; it would crush an army. A sin-
gle touch puts in motion the ship that can bear upon
its deck the population of a city, or beneath can stow
away the freightage of a nation’s wealth. The rushing
train, entrusted with a thousand lives, is checked by
the motion of a single arm. ‘The complicated ma-
chinery that whirls, and groans, and labors through the
town-like factory, may be set in motion or arrested by
a touch. In one place you see it wielding a ponderous
Nasmyth hammer of many tons weight, while forging ©
the immense anchors that are to hold the huge levia-
thans navigating our seas; in another, polishing, be-
yond the skill of human handiwork, the delicate hair
spring that is to trace and record the noiseless progress
of time. Here it is employed upon massive blocks of
iron, which it volls out, cuts up, and moulds, as the
potter does his clay; and here it is spinning threads so
fine that they almost elude the sight, while it is weay-
ing them into textures that look like wreaths of morn-
ing mist. Unaffected by time, place, or climate, inca-
pable of 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. It matters not how difficult or varied the
services required, or where they are to be performed.
In the depths of the earth or on the mountain top, in
the open field or in the crowded city, in the frozen
north or at the burning tropics; whether requiring the
most gigantic strength or the nicest care, this wondrous
agent is suited to them all. It enables man, who is
slow and weak compared with other terrestrial crea-
tures, to pass from place to place with all the speed of

1d

the eagle, carrying burdens in his flight that would
crush the strongest elephant into a shapeless mass. By
its means the force and dexterity of a million fingers
are subjected to the control of one mind, and imbued.
with its intelligence. Under the transforming touch of
this wonder-working power, the rudest substances are
made to assume shapes of beauty and utility. It gives
instruments to the philosopher, tools to the artisan, and
labor-saving machinery to the mechanic and agricul-
turist. The frail vesture of the cotton seed, that once
rested unnoticed where it fell, becomes clothing for
nations; and when it has answered all possible pur-
poses, and been reduced to the state of filthy rags,
which even the poorest beggar would reject, even this
refuse-like matter is taken up, and by a magical pro-
cess transmuted into fair pages, that are impressed with
imperishable thoughts almost with the rapidity of
thought itself—then distributed throughout the world.
These are a few of the astounding results achieved in
our day by the power of steam,—a power which
remained latent so many ages in the impalpable vapor
that has played before the eyes of man since the
creation, but which it was reserved for our age to evoke,
control, and subjugate. Science has taught us the spell
by which the spirit of the mist has been conjured from
its dark abode, to administer to our behests. In the
glowing words of our own Webster,—“ It now seems
to say to men, at least to artisans—leave off your man-
ual labor, bestow but your skill and reason to the direc-
tion of my power, and I will bear the toil, with no
muscle to grow weary, with no nerve to relax, no breast
to feel faintness,”

But even the subtle influences of caloric, which thus

16

animates the inert water with Titanic might, fails to
excite our astonishment to so high a degree as those
marvels recently produced by electrical agency. If the
one unites lands and transports material objects, the
other seems destined to become the link that shall
unite the universal mind—the vital channel of intelli-
gence and thought between all the habitable parts of
the earth. As yet, we dare hardly venture to conjec-
ture’ the diverse forms this mysterious power is destined
to assume, or the part it is yet to perform, in the future
history of our planet. Some general ideas are all that
we can fix upon as the basis of our speculations; and
even these are amongst the most astounding facts
within the compass of human knowledge. They re-
semble the operations of a spiritual rather than of a
material agency. ‘The Electric Telegraph has now be-
come a familiar object. We look upon it with a care-
less eye—we pass onward and forget how once we
deemed its properties miraculous; yet by it we see
realized more than the beautiful fiction of Strada. Not
between two minds alone does it establish a responsive
sympathy, but it creates a communion of thought be-
tween cities and kingdoms. It enables a man to utter
his feelings at the very instant they arise in his mind
to ears that listen for them thousands of miles away.
It darts with lightning speed through realms of space,
and as it darts communicates thought from man to
man. With the rapidity of the electric flash, it
equally speeds the messages of love, or the dread sum-
mons which inexorable justice sends after its victim ;
and when the murderer has fled from the scene of his
crime on the wings of steam, that flash along the tele-
graphic wire has overtaken him by a still speedier

|

messenger, ranging the officers of justice to seize him
thousands of miles from the spot where the bloody
deed was done. ‘The enchanted horse of the Arabian
magician, or the magic carpet of the German sorcerer,
were poor contrivances compared with that agent which
momentarily speeds along our telegraphic wires, and
by which almost all the difficulties of time and space
are overcome. ,

Look at those wires, as they stretch along by our
ereat railway 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, of 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,—plung-
ing 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
abysses of ocean, where uncouth monsters hide, where
human vision has never penetrated, and amid scenes
that have been secret since the beginning of time—
there shall lie the wondrous 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 learn to
still his mimic thunders, and aspire after higher and
brighter glories than those won by mutual slaughter on
such gory fields as Magenta and Solferino. ‘The fire
that glides along this ligature shall scorch away the
differences of race and nation, and men shall cease to
learn war any more. This globe of ours must yet be

2

18

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

But there is another power at work in our age, that
incalculably transcends the power of electricity or of
steam—an agency to which they are both ministering
servants. It is that of mind itself—the prime mover
and director of them all, defining their purposes, and
controlling their operations ; that restless, indefatigable
and inscrutable principle, to which the human frame
is but an apparatus of exquisitely adjusted organs;
that intellectual power which as it thinks, and feels
and wills, impels man to action, directs his movements
and registers their results—which pushes its inquiries
into every department of creation ; and with an insati-
able thirst for knowledge, scans the mightiest opera-
tions of Nature, and scrutinizes her minutest processes.
It surveys the past, anticipates the future, and ever
and anon turns in upon itself to observe its own move-
ments, and conduct a marvellous analysis of which it is

19

itself at once the subject, the instrument and the per-
former.

In this great mind movement, by which our age is
so peculiarly characterised, evinced in the rapid devel-
opment 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 has become what Cicero vauntingly
styled it in his day—* the nearest of all employments
to the purely philosophical and scientific kind.” It
has in our day become a pursuit, which to prosecute to
its full capacity, the arts and sciences of modern times
must be made to bear upon it, 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 intelli-
gent husbandman, that the solid earth whose surface
he tills, which bears upon its stalwart breast the Cyclo-
pean masonry of the granite and limestone mountains,
was once held in aqueous solution, and its substance as
impressible as the sand from which the ocean wave has
just retired. She points him to the delicate markings
the footprints and impressions of organic animal struc-
tures, 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 con-

20

tinuity 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 curi-
ous 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 few
thousand years of man’s existence. Geology counts
the age of the earth not by celestial cycles, but by an
index found in the solid framework of the globe itself.
It points to a long succession of monuments, each of
which may have required myriads of years for its elab-
oration. It arranges them in chronological order, ob-
serves in them marks of skill and wisdom, finds within
them the vast cemeteries of the successive inhabitants
of the earth, tracing the changes backward through
successive eras of development, until the time, when “the
earth was without form and void, and darkness rested
upon the face of the deep.” ‘This brilliant science
attests that man was the last of created beings in our
planet. Through centuries and ages of creative activ-
ity, 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 opened,
there is no record of man. He is as absolute a stran-
ger, as though he were not at this moment and never
had been a denizen of this planet. But yet how sub-
lime 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
creative energy and intelligence were exerted to pre-
pare a fit habitation for the coming man. ‘The flint
of your mouutains, the red clay of your seashores, the

21

marl that fertilizes your fields, and makes them wave
with a golden harvest ; the rich abounding treasury of
your coal fields; are but evidences of a divine fore-
cast, that has thus deposited the remains of animal
and vegetable life, which by gradual transformation
and decomposition, were 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, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
thing 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 dislocated its framework, has, in a remarkable de-
gree, in our age made itself subservient to the great art
of Agriculture. if

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 ac-
cumulated that vast amount of carbonaceous matter, now
ministering so much tothe comfort and prosperity of man
—those immense coal deposits, out of whose subterra-
nean treasure-house comes the substance that enlivens our
hearthstones, prepares our food, furnishes light to our
dwellings; and is fast becoming the essential agent of
that mighty power of steam, upon which modern loco-
motion, the increasing value of the products of our farms
and manufactories so much depend.

With unerring certainty geology points the agricul-
turalist to that tertiary formation where the marine

22

strata are deposited, to which the rivers, lakes, floods
and seas of the ancient world contributed. Here you
find the grand depositories, where are stored the fat and
unctuous marls and green sand, which have proved such
efficient fertilizers of the soil in the alluvial districts of
New Jersey.

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 tell the character of

the outer soil from the rocks beneath it. In some
places you meet with sand-stone, in other places lime-
stone, in other, slate or hardened clay or rock. Hence
your sandy soils, your clay and your calcareous soils: for
it is almost certain that the upper soil has been formed
from the crumbling or decay of the solid rocks beneath
it. Thus, the modern intelligent agriculturist seeking
a locality for settlement, by the aid of this useful
science is now enabled to say—‘ By the geological struc-
tures of this section of country, here, I shall have the
more permanent productive soil; here I am more within
the reach of agricultural improvement ; here, in addi-
tion 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 in this
remarkable age ministers to the wants and necessities
of the agriculturist.

Agricultural chemistry comes in, to teach him the

- nature of the various elementary constituents of bodies,

and the laws which regulate their combination in the

23

inorganic and non-vital world: while animal and vege-
table physiology instructs him in the constituents of
organic or vital beings. Chemistry discloses to him
the existence of deleterious gasses in the atmosphere,
while vegetable phys siology most beautifully demon-
strates how the leaves of the plants are the lungs by
which they breathe, and appropriate the carbonic acid
of the atmosphere, which is retained and absorbed by
them as part of their structure, while the oxygen so
necessary to man’s vitality, is excreted into the air by
them as useless. So thus by an arrangement, whose
wisdom is apparent, the vegetable and animal kingdom
are made to contribute mutually to each other’s sup-
port. Nay, they are essential to each other’s existence.
Destroy the animal 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 breath, will lose that element by which
life alone continues.

Chemistry reveals how certain elements of the in-
organic world contain nitrogen, phosphorus, soda and
lime; while vegetable physiology clearly demonstrates
how the living organism of the plant, when these sub-
stances, in the shape of natural or artificial manures, are
brought to its roots, through these vegetable mouths
drink in-the liquid nourishment that the rains wash
down, which by Nature’s secret process goes to form
stem, leaves and flowers. Vegetable physiology de-
velops for the agriculturist the great truth, that as the
blood is to the life of man, so the sap in vegetables is
the vital current, the nourishing fluid which, circulating
through their veins and arteries, is necessary for.the
maintenance and increase of their frames; and as this

24

nourishing fluid is being constantly consumed, and
must receive fresh supplies, agricultural chemistry re-
veals the elements that enter into its formation. It
analyzes the sap of the vegetable, and finds it to con-
sist of all the elements, of which the individual plant
is composed, while carbon, hydrogen and oxygen mate-
rially enter into its formation. ‘Then vegetable physio-
logy most curiously makes manifest how plants derive
all these gasses from the atmosphere, their carbon from
its carbonic acid, their hydrogen from its moisture, and
their nitrogen from the gleaming lightning, that shed-
ding its lurid glare, during the passing thunder shower,
gives down this important element, which coming in
contact with earth’s organic substances, produces that
vigor in vegetation, which is the certain accompani-
ment of the summer shower, So that in fact, the
electric magazines of the skies, aided by 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 may in
truth be said to reveal to him who studies it in a pro-
per spirit, the sublime and exalted mission of the whole
vegetable economy ; which economy, singularly enough,
though “of the earth, earthy,” symbolizes in the im-
mutable laws of vegetable life the spiritual ordinance
of that which is yet to be in the great hereafter. It
in truth makes manifest,

‘How 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.”

?

25

It reveals how the immutable law 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 putrefaction the
symbol of renewed production. The brave apostle to
the Gentiles preaches this beautiful truth in that sub-
lime passage which has so often comforted the stricken
mourner, as, weeping over the grave of the beloved,
he hears with wildly beating heart that fearful Mis-
erere of the last service of the Church, “ Earth to
earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’—“ 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 is not this as well, the universal law that his-
tory 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 humanity be
changed, but the great law of progress, of reconstruc-
tion from decay, still urges humanity on; and the ruin
of states and empires becomes 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 physiology. Amongst the wondrous
analogies disclosed by it in the animal and vegetable
kingdom, none certainly are more astonishing than that
curious discovery of sexes in the higher order of plants:

26

making manifest how, by the impregnation of the germ
in the 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 per-
fect plant. How singularly significant, too, the revela-
tion that in the flower of every plant rest these organs
of reproduction. So that calm race, the flowers, all
loveliness and tranquillity, whose life is beauty, and
whose breath is perfume, play no idle part in Nature’s
workshop ; for to them is in reality committed 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 that crawls in the dust, and of the 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 phy-
siology 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 instinctive love
and tenderness, surrounds the germ, before it is sepa-
rated from the parent flower, with nutritive matter—
the starch, the gluten, and the 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 ex-
posed to warmth and moisture, and the oxygen of the

27

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 has already, as
every intelligent farmer knows, advanced, with aston-
ishing rapidity, the agricultural interests of the world.

Chemistry, as a science, is of comparatively late
origin; and how few there are, unless their attention
is directed to it, who can fully realize the extent to
which it has contributed to the comfort, prosperity, and
luxury of the world.

When, in the latter part of the last century, the
focus of Priestly’s burning lens evolved from the com-
mon red precipitate of our apothecaries’ shops 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 should
introduce a total revolution in the manufacture of
paper and 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 ven-
tured on the prediction that the sun itself, in our day,
should place a pencil in the hands of .Daguerre and
Talbot which should make the highest efforts of the

28

painter’s skill, poor in the comparison? Or when the
French philosopher, not a half century ago, perceived
the disturbance of the magnetic needle, produced by a
neighboring galvanic current, who could have conceived
that from this circumstance science should conjure
up a sprite that would outstrip the fairy Oberon, “in
putting a girdle round the earth in forty minutes ?”

But great indeed as are unquestionably these contri-
butions to the sum total of human comfort and pros-
perity, we doubt whether in practical every-day useful-
ness, they have not been equalled by those which
chemistry has made to agriculture, and that, too, within
a recent period.

It is within the memory of most of us, when the
application of this science to agriculture was first effi-.
ciently made. Why it was only the other day that
Liebig made the first successful attempt to improve
agricultural resources, when he suggested, on theoretic
grounds alone, the addition of sulphuric acid to bones,
as a means of rendering them when used more soluble,
so that the spongioles of the thirsty plant might the
more easily appropriate the liquid nourishment.

But the intelligent farmer of to-day, who has learned
through the developments of this science great and
useful truths, truths of which he never dreamed before,
is ready to acknowledge his indebtedness. 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 acquaintance with the character of the soil, the or-
ganism of plants, and the nature of the food that will
best perfect that organism.

The farmer of one idea, the man who, in this age,

29

despises book-farming, as he contemptuously calls it, is
ever like the man with the muck rake in Bunyan, look-
ing downward, and never wishing to extend the range
of his vision. He is as one who is content to stick to
the old Troy coach in preference to the many more cer-
tain 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 that men had before a revela-
tion. Experience did much for the age in which old
Cato the Censor lived, and in his Agricultural Treatise
he very properly enjoined on the young Roman farmer,
“Beware of rashly contemning the usages adopted by
others.” This 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 the world got along very well
without book-farming many years ago. Yes, 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: “A farmer never objects to receive politi-
cal information from newspapers; he is quite willing
to learn the state of the markets from newspapers; and
as willing to gain religious notions from reading and
historical knowledge, and all sorts of information,
except that relating to his business. He will go over
and hear a 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

30

after harvest time; but if that neighbor should write
it all down carefully, and put it into print, it’s all poison!
it’s book farming !”

‘«Strange, such a difference there should be
’Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.’’

Let me enumerate in brief, for time warns me I must
not trespass much longer on your attention, the bene-
fits that have resulted to agriculture by the develop-
ments of chemistry.

It has taught the agricultural world the value of sub-
stances for manures, which heretofore have been
deemed worthless, It has shown why plants grow
upon asoil that is well manured, because such manure
has added to the soil the elements that enter into the
structure of plants,—nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur,
potash, soda, and magnesia. It has taught the agricul-
turist 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. It has
taught the characteristic distinction between animal
and vegetable manures,—that the former contains a
much larger proportion of nitrogen than the latter ;
and instructs you how to best treat animal manure, so as
to hold and preserve that nitrogen, or the volatile am-
monia which decay evolves from it, and upon which
most of its virtue depends.

Chemical analysis, perhaps, will show you that your
soil is deficient in sulphur or insoda. 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 weight. You find that the land you are

31

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 sweep-
ing scythe.

The intelligent husbandman who spreads lime upon
his land, through the revelations of agricultural chem-
istry is aware that, by this means, he goes through the
very process a chemist resorts to in his laboratory to
analyze the soil; he liberates the silica, the potash, and
the phosphates, which enable these substances the
better to mingle with the soil, and administer to the
demands 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 frequent liming will only 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 slo-
venly and ignorantly, contentiug himself with the fre-
quent liming, will-find its constant depredations will
leave his soil poor indeed.

Already the system of scientific cultivation is being
guided and directed materially by the light of chemistry.
By taking advantage of varieties produced naturally, by
endeavoring to produce others by art, and forming
hybrids, an immense number of varieties have been
brought into existence, each possessing peculiarities of
great interest and importance. On the maritime cliffs
of England there existed a little plant with a fusiform
root, smooth leaves, and a flower similar to that of the

32

wild mustard, with a saline taste. By scientific culti-
vation there have been produced from that insignificant
and useless plant, all the brocolis or kales, at least a
dozen varieties, all the cabbages that head, all the
early savoys, and the whole family of turnips. Now,
although it is not fair to suppose that cultivation can
ever produce from a single plant so many varieties as
have sprung from this brassica, much is being done,
and much more can be done in this direction. Scien-
tific cultivation, aided by chemistry, is now bending all
its energies to produce varieties which shall extract as
much as possible from the soil in the shortest possible
time ; in other words, varieties richest in nutritive mat-
ter, coming speediest to maturity.

Formerly, when the supply of manure was limited,
the agriculturist had no motive, or scarcely any, of pro-
ducing such varieties. The varieties he already pos-
sessed absorbed from the soil all the nutritive elements
of the manure he had to give it, and as fast as he could
furnish it. Now, however, artificial manures promise
to give an unlimited supply, and the case is different.

Agricultural chemistry has further revealed to you,
that the drought, when the earth is parched and vege-
tation dwarfed and withered by the heat, is only an
affliction for the present, a blessing in disguise for the
future, ‘That the early and the latter rain may pro-
duce at once abundant crops, but dry weather is needed
to bring to the surface from the depths of the earth
food for the future harvest. That as the drought con-
tinues, the water from the sub-soil keeps constantly
bringing to the surface the salts of lime, of magnesia,
or of potash that it holds in solution. Thus we are

33

taught to see in the drouth one of Nature’s ordinances
for keeping up the fertility of the soil.

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

Nearly a century ago, a Scotch mother, according to
Sir Walter Scott, objected to her sons using 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 this good old Scottish mother would have thought,
if she could have been spared to our times; and her
wondering eyes could behold in our age the increasing
triumphs of mind over matter, and the subjugation of
the physical elements to an intellectual sovereign.
Surely, if in any department, man has sought out many
inventions, it has been in the department of agricul-
ture. With your patent horse-hoes and patent drills,
with your steam ploughs, your centre draft ploughs for
sand soils, and for clay soils, with your side-hill and
sub-soil ploughs, your reaping, mowing and threshing
machines, your revolving wheel and hay rakes, and
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
au century ago.

Such are the wonders of the remarkable age in
which we live, such have been the contributions made

34

by science to Agriculture. Living then in so progressive
an age, it is hardly necessary for me to say, that it is
the duty of all classes in an agricultural State like New
Jersey, to gain by every means within their power the
full amount of benefits placed within their reach.
We have been heaving, to-day, the log into the deep,
and measuring the rapidity of the current, by which the
world is borne along. You cannot stop that current if
you would, and you ought not if you could. Neither can
you stand idly by, trusting to the strength of the
ancient 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, and be lost
among the shallows. Your duty, and the duty of all of
us, is to strive to turn in the best direction, the current
which -is carrying us forward, opening for it a free
course into regions where it is most needed, rejoicing
as we see it fertilizing the material and intellectual
waste places.

Farmers of New Jersey! your lines indeed have fallen
upon pleasant places ; yours is a goodly heritage. Like
“the children of the Promise,” “ you have been brought
into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of foun-
tains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills,
a land wherein thou canst eat bread without scarce-
ness, thou canst not lack any thing in it—a land whose
stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig
brass.”

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 the
increase of your kine, and your flocks of sheep.

From your alluvial districts, where kindly Nature

30

has laid up for you the fertilizing treasures that have
so enriched your fields, to the chain of noble high-
lands that skirt your northern line, rich in their varied
mineral deposits—from your seaboard, where the At-
lantic dashes with sullen roar, to where the waters of
our own Delaware glide murmuringly along—there is
no land in ‘all our widespread confederacy that can
surpass it, in the value of its fertile acres, the genial
nature of its skies, or its abounding capability to meet
the great and growing wants of the mighty future
that is opening before it.

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—
and a soil containing those fertilizing elements that
have already made garden-spots of its waste places,
and shall yet make its “ barrens” to rejoice and blos-
som like the rose.

It is a land of which I may exclaim, as I glance
over it with pride, in the words of the Scottish song,
slightly altered :

- ““The heath waves wild upon her hills;

And foaming frae the fells

Her fountains sing of freedom yet,
As they dance down the dells.

And well I lo’e the land, my lads,
That’s guarded by the sea:

Then Jersey’s dales, and Jersey’s vales,
And Jersey’s hills for me ;

We’ll drink a health to Jersey yet,
Wi all the honors three.’’

Such, Jersey Farmers, is the lot of your inheritance,

36

and I cannot better close than in those eloquent and
earnest words of the late Bishop of New Jersey: “It
is your heritage, and it is for you to own the fulness of
the debt of grateful love by the discharge of your high
duties to God, your country, and the generations yet
to come, that it may be to you an heritage for ever.”

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