New England each autumn. In their improved character these do not date beyond the limits of this paper. Thirty years ago even the managers of these had but vague ideas of the characteristics of the various breeds of cattle entered for exhibition, and a herd book was as illegible to them as a Hebrew Bible, and its lore as unfamiliar as the Pandects of Justinian. But woe now to the exhibitor who seeks to enter a grade animal as a thoroughbred. Shame and derision would cover any man who, at this day, should claim, as did a popular agricultural author at an early fair of the New England Agricultural Society, that the wrinkles on a Merino sheep were the result of shearing. The day or two spent upon the fair ground are often, to the observing farmer, the most profitable of his whole year. He then and there imbibes, unconsciously perhaps, important facts and ideas which are afterwards effective in furthering his prosperity.

But let us turn for a moment to some of the mechanical agencies which have appeared during the last thirty years to aid the uplift of New England farming. The earliest to which attention will be invited, and the most important, perhaps, is:

1. The mowing-machine. McCormick's reaper astonished the world at the London Exposition in 1851, and the mowingmachine grew out of it soon after. The latter made its first appearance in New England about 1855. In other sections of the country it may have been present a little earlier, but not much. It has proved of great value to the farmer, as one good machine will cut as much grass as six or seven men. Indeed, machines have already been constructed, and are in use among us, which are capable, under favorable circumstances, of mowing twenty acres a day. The mowing-machine has not only aided in the solution of the labor question, but, by imperatively demanding the removal of stumps, fixed rocks, and stone heaps, as well as the filling up of holes and wet places, has led to the material improvement of hundreds of farms.

2. The steel or chilled iron plow. The advent of steel and chilled iron plows is more recent than that of the mowingmachine. Thirty years ago many farmers were just relinquishing their wooden moldboard plows and hitching to new ones of

cast iron. The latter were a great improvement upon the former, the draft of which, in deep plowing, required half the teams of a neighborhood. The iron plow was of easier draft and did better work. It was satisfactory until better ones presented themselves made of steel or chilled iron. When a farmer saw with his own eyes, upon his own land, an Olliver chilled iron plow doing precisely the same work by a draft of eight hundred pounds to do which a cast iron plow required eleven hundred and fifty, he very wisely abandoned the latter and procured the former. But soon after the Olliver came the sulky plow, suggesting by its appearance a pretty poor cross of a devil's darning-needle upon a one-sided grasshopper, full of brag and very saucy. Its looks were not prepossessing, but a half-dozen years' experience has shown that, riding comfortably upon one of these, drawn by three good horses harnessed abreast, a single man will invert two acres of tough sod land to the depth of eight inches and a half in a single day, and, if need be, two acres and a half. Indeed, the improvement in plows within the last fifteen years has reduced the cost of heavy plowing more than fifty per cent.

3. The improved harrow. Kindred remarks may be made of the improved harrows which have been introduced during the period under consideration. The farmer who has walked beside or behind an old-fashioned spike-toothed harrow from breakfast to supper, day after day, will hail these as gifts from above. Pulverization of the soil is second in importance only to its fertilization. To a certain extent it is fertilization, as it secures admission to its bosom of air, heat, moisture, carbonic acid, etc., which render assimilable the plant food locked up therein. Improved harrows, like the "Acme," the "Disk," and others of like character, upon which the workman rides forth over his field like a warrior in his chariot, have justly remanded to disuse those of earlier periods, as they do better work with greater comfort and at less expense.

4. Wheel horse rakes. The modern horse rake has changed hay-raking from hard work to pleasant recreation, enabling the proprietor of a hayfield to superintend his work while, at the same time, contributing to it his own full share. With a sprystepping horse and such a rake, he gathers into windrows in a

part of the afternoon the morning's mowing of two machines or of a dozen men, enjoying the while a pleasant and refreshing ride.

5. The hay tedder. Within the last twenty years the farmer has made profitable acquaintance with the hay tedder, which hastens the drying of the hay crop and thereby reduces the cost of its harvesting.

6. The manure spreader. At a date quite recent, the manure spreader has come to render comparatively light one of the hardest and most disagreeable works of the farm. While it may

not have yet realized its highest promise, it has lessened by one half and more the labor and cost of spreading manure upon land, performing at once the double work of pulverizing the materials applied and of scattering them rapidly over the surface with an evenness unattainable by the dung-fork or shovel.

Upon terminating here a list which might be greatly extended, it may be said that these six implements alone have reduced the cost of the farm operations to which they apply more than fifty per cent. What improved machinery is to the manufacturer, what reduced grades and steel rails are to transportation, what better processes are to the miner, increased knowledge and better implements are to the farmer. To ignore these renders profitable farming impossible, and agricultural bankruptcy inevitable.

It may be said, in reply to such as ask if these agencies have improved materially the general farming of New England, that it is too early yet to expect full results, as they are but a part of the foundation support of a new agricultural structure, and, like all foundations, they are mostly below the surface and make little show. Yet some parts of the superstructure beginning to rise upon them are as clearly in sight as the headlands which mark the New England coast, or the mountains which guard its western border.

For instances of this fact, compare the dairying of to-day with that of 1850, or even of 1875. Intelligent dairying is now an exact science, and managed under rules as precise as many which prevail in the laboratory. Indeed, a well-conducted creamery is a laboratory. How largely, during the period under consideration, has been diffused a correct knowledge of the composition

and office of fertilizers, and how generally is the farmer learning to supplement home supplies by the phosphates, nitrates, and potash salts of commerce! Compare the splendid specimens of Short-horn, Devon, Hereford, Jersey, and Dutch cattle, to be seen at any of the large autumnal fairs, with the unimproved descendants of the importations of two hundred and fifty years ago, and now known as native stock. Since the war, has been introduced the old South European system of preserving green fodder for winter use by burying it in the ground, and the French terms "silo" and "ensilage" have been incorporated into our language without the change of a single letter. Very largely has brute power been substituted for human, and the great truth partially adopted which was taught twenty years ago by that devoted apostle of agriculture, the late ex-Alderman Mecchi, of Tip Tree Hall, "Never use a man when you can use a horse, for a horse's labor is cheaper and more reliable; never use a horse when you can use a steam engine, for the engine can be kept at half the expense and will last twice as long."

During the last thirty years many New England farmers have experimentally found that stagnant water will enter drain tiles when properly laid, and that by its removal worthless swamps may be converted to fertile fields, greatly to the increase of their scanty acreage and the annual income of their farms. An agricultural literature has made its appearance, more extensive and better by far than any which has preceded it. To this the volumes of Dr. Storer are a valuable contribution. The intelligent farmer can now lay aside as obsolete his copies of "La Livre de la Ferme," "Morton's Cyclopedia," "Stephens' Book of the Farm," and other works of high excellence in their day, since better ones covering the same ground are now within his

Able agricultural professors have taken the chairs awaiting them. The new colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts bear upon their rolls the names of hundreds of students, a good proportion of whom have taken the agricultural courses of study of their respective institutions. During the last decade. the depopulation of the agricultural towns has been arrested and the number showing lessening populations during that of

1860-70 has been reduced from eight hundred and eightynine to seven hundred and sixty-six.

To show the decline and rally of population the following tables have been compiled from the United States census returns:

A Table showing the Population of New England Towns during the Three Decades, 1850–60, 1860–70, and 1870–80.