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No. 11. Can the keeping of domestic fowls be made profitable? If so, what kinds are best, and what is the best treatment and method of using their manure? Messrs. Rice, Russ and Tucker.

No. 12. Can the cultivation of the small fruits be made profitable? If so, what varieties are best, and what is the best mode of culture? Messrs. Noyes, Dill and Lancaster.

No. 13. By what means can the settlement of the new and fertile soils of Maine be best secured? Messrs. Stevens, Cushman and Dill.

No. 14. What breeds and classes of horses are most deserving attention and encouragement in Maine, and what is the best mode of rearing and training them? Messrs. Tucker, Davis and Wasson. Mr. Chamberlain subsequently reported on the first Topic, as follows:

"To what extent and by what means can labor saving machinery and improved implements be most advantageously introduced?

This topic, in the minds of your committee, is so intimately connected with the whole subject of husbandry, if not underlying its whole successful prosecution, as to invite a wide range of thought in its consideration; and if in our hasty treatment of the subject, we have found it easier to deviate somewhat from the direct line of sight, we hope to be pardoned for circumlocution, if we succeed in coming to the text in the end.

Taking a view from our present stand-point, we find the circumstances attending the American farmer, are to a certain extent peculiar to the nation, and distinctive from that of older and more densely peopled countries. So long as we have cheap fertile lands, inviting the husbandman to enter upon and enjoy, so long will the wages of labor be high compared with products.

Manufactures are affected alike with the farm. This condition of things has tended to stimulate the inventive genius of our people to substitute machinery for the bone and sinew of human organism. In the department of manufactures, this substitution has been carried very much farther than in the agricultural. This arises in part from the conditions in the case, yet an item in this difference undoubtedly is the difficulty that inventors and makers of improved implements encounter in the apathy so generally prevailing among farmers themselves in relation to adopting such improvements.

In past time it has been remarked of farmers as a fault, that they are too slow-too indifferent to progress. This may be their virtue, as the conservative power of the commonwealth. But we fear the circumstance as related by the English nobleman too often has found a counterpart. Some time after he had sent his people an improved plow, he found it had been laid aside; when they assigned as a reason" we be all of one mind, that it make the weeds

grow." Farm laborers often lack the skill and tact requisite to adjust and apply a new and complicated machine or implement. The machinery of the workshop is superintended by schooled intelligence.

The farmer, unlike the manufacturer, seldom goes abroad to learn from observation the workings of the wonders of progress that are abroad in the world. The success of the merchant and the manufacturer, depends on their intelligence and quick adaptation of means to ends. The farmer may remain at home, and "set his face as a flint," against book-farming and all innovation; and continue to live-merely vegetate by a round of labors such as were performed in a former age; but without an "eye to the main chance," he is often found grumbling at the profligacy of the times, and the ruinous, "high-pressure," progress of the age, that recklessly outruns all sober sense, sedate customs and commendable stability.

We, who had our start in life in the rural districts, find that we need something like the startling blast from a steam-whistle to quicken our pulsation and keep us well up with the progress of the day. The boy of today is a being measurably progressed from the boy of a past age. He opens his eyes on busier scenes. At every turn his points of contact receive a stimulus. The well appointed school-room, improved books, a more extended round of studies, a freer intercourse with men and things, these improved facilities early develop the man and fit him to occupy an advanced standpoint.

With this glance at our condition, we may look forward, and be entirely safe in saying, that we are not likely to be overwhelmed with labor.

Whether we are to continue as heretofore without a leading agricultural interest, or whether we shall aim to make stock husbandry a prominent feature in our practice, it abates nothing from the interest and importance to be attached to the inquiry, whether we

shall earnestly seek to accomplish greater results by improved mechanical aids.

Gentlemen of this Board, who have carefully followed our able secretary through his valuable reports, must see clearly the capabilities, and the fitness of our soil for grazing as a leading pursuit; and are prepared to predicate an opinion, that we may look for a vast increase in the numbers and value of our domestic animals at no distant day, on something more tangible than the idle fancies of a fertile imagination. Allowing the convictions of gentlemen to coincide with the views of the secretary on this point, and we are ready to proceed with our inquiry as to the connection our Topic holds to our general interest.

One English writer says, "we are justified and compelled to adopt every useful implement and mechanical invention which will cheapen the cost of production." This word, "justified," clearly refers to the condition of things there, under which it might look as injustice to the dependent laborer who delved with the spade, to introduce machines that should supersede spade labor. That such introduction cheapened the cost of production, there seemed to be no doubt. Again we read from an English farmer, "Root cultivation is the farmer's sheet anchor and the nation's safety-valve. If we build a house on a poor foundation, the labor of the superstructure is wasted; and unless we commence farming by endeavoring to produce great green crops, we shall find our future success and stability very uncertain indeed." An American farmer says, "many farmers who now pride themselves in raising fair crops of oats, would find it to their advantage to raise twenty times their value in carrots on the same amount of ground."

A common saying in the Mother country may be borrowed, and in time hold good here as there, "without roots there is no stock; without stock there is no manure; without manure there is no grain and hay." While the statistics of England and of the continent of Europe, show beyond cavil, that the "shift system," based on the root crop, has tended directly to increase the value of domestic animals and the acreable products of the cereals more than a hundred per cent. in a quarter of a century, and vastly augmented the product of pasture and meadow, may we not safely follow in the same direction? When it has been demonstrated and made clear to our

comprehension, that the product of an acre of carrots or mangolds is an equivalent for fifteen or twenty tons of hay, may we not safely advance in root-culture beyond the bounds of the kitchen garden?

The farmer of Maine needs but few words from us on the necessity of improved implements for harvesting purposes. The best scythes, forks, horse-rakes, grain-cradles, &c., that can be obtained, are being tried and adopted; for like his razor, he has a feeling sense of the importance to be attached to their good qualities.

Mowing machines have been bought and used to an extent which plainly shows a creditable desire on the part of our farmers, to avail themselves of the advantages to be derived from a perfect instrument of this sort. So much attention is now being given to them, so great is the concentration of mechanical science on this machine. which is destined to occupy so important a position in these northern states, as to warrant the hope that it may, ere long, emerge from its present imperfect condition,-modified and improved in the essential of resistance to the propelling power,-simplified and perfected so as to do our work in a fully satisfactory manner. Manufacturers will then have no reason whatever to complain that farmers fail to give them due encouragement.

But in the matter of tillage, and in preparing crops for market or consumption, the power that has been conferred on this Board in the organic act—the power to talk, may profitably be directed and applied without stint. In this, as in spiritual affairs, we need "line upon line, and precept upon precept." While we aim high for future achievement, let us make sure of progress, even if it be slow. It is wise in us today to learn from those who are in advance of us in the general progression.

We know an intelligent farmer and market gardener, who ten years ago tilled thirty acres, employing sufficient force to ensure greatest profits; and who made it a point to secure and test every farm implement that came before the public as an improvement. At the close of the last season, he informs us, that he has in the last ten years gradually extended his operations to one hundred twenty acres the general style of crops continuing the same,—and has in the mean time had no occasion to make addition to the number of his men.

This fourfold increase of worked area, has been accomplished solely by adopting every improvement in tools and machinery.

In some portions of our state, farmers are now conducting their operations with less manual labor than formerly, by reason of increased wages. This decrease in help is hardly compensated by facilities afforded in the use of the few improved implements they have secured.

Farmers have been discouraged from growing roots by reason of the great amount of labor required in their culture. The recently published account of the premium crop of carrots in Kennebec county is noticeable. The crop was grown on a sandy loam, -the two preceding crops being carrots; the dressing, compost-made mostly of muck; all the antecedents tending to show good tilth and the absence of weeds; yet the item of weeding is set down at the rate of twenty-four days per acre. Reasoning from our experience with a stony soil, we should conclude that by the use of a wheel-hoe that may be made for a dollar, the above crop could have been tended with half that expenditure of time, and the ground left at the end of the season, absolutely free from weeds. Field culture of roots, on any extended area, can be conducted with greater economy by horse-implements than by hand. But other means and agencies than mere words must be summoned to aid us in fixing in the minds of the generality of farmers, a due appreciation of the importance of this subject. They often find words alone very evanescent things. They want a "visible and tangible embodiment of science" in the shape of improved implements, often thrust in their faces.

Too much importance cannot well be attached to agricultural exhibitions, for the impetus they have contributed to such advancement in the art of husbandry as has been witnessed. These call the farmer and his sons from home. It is their school, the terms of which are short, but its lessons have an enduring impress. It is these exhibitions on which we must rely more than on our use of language, for the success that shall attend the present effort. At these shows, while we look with pleasure and pride on the results of labor and skill as displayed in our stock, and in the products of the field and the garden, we look on the other side with equal interest, to the implements by the aid of which all these mighty results have

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