enced to choose such occupation as their tastes or talents or fancy dictate; but the boy who happens to be born on a farm has no right to have any taste or talent or fancy for anything but farming. I say the whole idea is reprehensible and preposterous from beginning to end, and the man who indulges it ought to have been born in Russia and have died childless. If you want your boys to make the most of themselves, to honor you in your old age, and bless your memory when you are gone, let them choose their own calling, no matter at what cost or self-sacrifice to yourself for the present, and you will never regret it. You had that right years ago. Shall your sons have any less than you had? They will be ten times as apt to stay contented on the farm if they know they do so voluntarily. A man must love his occupation in order to succeed in it, else it becomes mere drudgery instead of a delight.

But to return. If these propositions which I have here laid down are true, and you see fit to adopt them, and begin in earnest to study your business as men in other callings have to study theirs, take my word for it, in a surprisingly short time the world in general, and New Hampshire farming in particular, will wear a very different aspect to you from what it does to-day. No man has ever yet reached the limit of productiveness of an acre of ground. It may never be reached, but that we can make long strides in advance of anything ever yet accomplished, no man will deny.

It was made of Well, that man

I know a man in Belknap county who a few years ago purchased eight acres of plain land so poor it would hardly grass over, investing in it nearly every dollar he had. On it he built a silo, I think the first one built in the county. wood, and very cheaply constructed at that. became the laughing-stock of the whole community. They nicknamed him Silo in derision. But he had an idea, and no matter what people said or thought, he resolved to work it out. I went to his place two weeks ago to see and learn for myself what he had accomplished. I found him bright, cheerful, happy, and one of the most enthusiastic men I have met for a long time. From the product of his eight acres of poor land (sand his neighbors called it) he has built a good house and barn, and this

winter has twenty-one head of grown cattle and a horse, and not a pound of hay in his barn. All are fed on ensilage, and are looking better, much better, than the cattle will average throughout the county which are fed on dry fodder. On four acres he raised sufficient ensilage corn to keep these twenty-one head of cattle five months. His neighbors have long since ceased to laugh at him, but instead are studying his methods and preparing to follow his example.

If such results can be obtained from eight acres, what, I ask you farmers whose homesteads cover hundreds of acres, are the possibilities of your farms when wisely and intelligently managed so as to make the most of them?

Sir Isaac Newton, whose research and investigations in the scientific world have so blessed mankind, said at the close of his life that the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him.

In view of what has been said here and in view of what we know is being accomplished around us, what shall we say of the vast possibilities of the agricultural world?

The Athenian philosophers caught the light of the sun as it flashed from the shield of Minerva, and they looked no higher. A New Hampshire farmer, standing in the gray dawn of the twentieth century, should be content with no reflected light, but taking the most advanced thought of the ablest mind of his time for a stepping-stone, let him press toward the mark for the prize of his high calling.

OATS.

BY JOSEPH B. WALKER, CONCORD.

"A grain which in England is usually fed to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." - Dr. Johnson.

Or the nativity of oats we have but an imperfect knowledge.* The Bible, while it speaks of wheat and barley, says nothing of oats. Indeed, I have found no mention of this grain previous to the Christian era. Since then it continually appears in agricultural history, and with increasing frequency as we approach modern times.

"It was cultivated by the prehistoric inhabitants of Central Europe, and is found in the remains of the late habitations in Switzerland, but Prof. Heer states that it did not appear until the bronze age and long after the appearance of wheat and barley."— U. S. Census, Vol. Agriculture, p. 493.

It may be considered, therefore, as a comparatively modern grain, developed very likely from the plant bearing the name of "wild oats" (avena fatua). I may, perhaps, be pardoned the remark that the sowing of wild oats by youthful hands has, at times, resulted in a type of manliness whose excellence ranks as high in the physical as do the finest varieties of avena sativa in the vegetable world. I would not, however, be understood as recommending the frequent sowing of such a crop by such hands.

We are told that that worthless Roman emperor Caligula (A. D. 12–41) fed his favorite horse, Incitatus, on gilded oats out of a golden cup. Suetonius says that "for this favorite animal, besides a marble stable, an ivory manger, purple housings, and a jeweled frontlet, he appointed a house, with a retinue of slaves and fine furniture, for the reception of such as were invited in the horse's name to sup with him. It is even said that he intended to make him consul." However valuable or cheap the horse may have been, he was, without any doubt, the superior of his master. Nevertheless, the folly of the latter has preserved for us the fact that oats were known in Roman agriculture at that remote period, but we have traced them no further.

II.

IMPORTANCE OF THE OAT CROP IN THE UNITED STATES.

Oats rank third in importance among our American cereals. The crop of 1879 was 407,859,999 bushels. They grow in almost all sections of the United States, from the southern frontier of Texas to the northern line of Oregon, and from the eastern side of Maine to the swamps of southern Florida. Indeed, their northern line of culture extends far beyond our Canadian frontier up to the great peninsula of our arctic territory of Alaska. In Europe they thrive luxuriantly in all parts of Ireland and Scotland. They are at home in Norway, Sweden, and all the northern countries of that continent. Their northern limit is conterminous with that of rye and barley, reaching up to and even within the arctic circle.

III.

THE OAT CROP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

We should expect, therefore as in fact we do - to find this cereal flourishing in this cold state of ours. If we cannot compete with Florida in the production of oranges and bananas, we can beat her and all the other Southern states in raising oats.

The oat crop, which has always been an important one in New Hampshire, is very largely a northern crop. The yield south of the Ohio River ranges from less than ten up to twenty-five bushels per acre. North of this line it varies from twenty-five up to sixty, seventy, and even ninety bushels. The amount of oats raised in 1879 north of the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude was over three hundred and sixty-three millions (363,020,399) of bushels, while south of it the crop amounted to less than fortyfive millions (44,818,600). More than one half of all the oats raised in the United States grow where the July temperature is from 70° to 75°, and only about one quarter (27.7 per cent) where it is from 75° to 80°.

The seventeen Northern states Connecticut (27.52), Maine (28.76), Massachusetts (31.23), Michigan (33.93), Minnesota (37.87), Nebraska (26.18), New Hampshire (34.51), New Jersey (27.00), New York (29.79), Ohio (31.49), Oregon (28.92), Pennsylvania (27.34), Rhode Island (28.58), Vermont (37.59), Illinois (32.24), Indiana (25.02), and Iowa (33.57) — gave in 1879 an average yield per acre of 36.79 bushels, while the seventeen Southern states - Alabama (9.36), Arkansas (13.33), California (26.85), Florida (9.76), Georgia (9.06), Kansas (18.77), Kentucky (11.35), Louisiana (8.56), Maryland (17.75), Mississippi (9.87), Missouri (21.34), North Carolina (7.67), South Carolina (10.39), Tennessee (10.08), Texas (20.56), Virginia (9.47), and West Virginia (15.04)-gave a yield of but 13.48 bushels.