for it there is a constant demand, which the farmers of the state but partially meet. Hundreds and hundreds of car-loads of oats come in from abroad to supplement our own deficiencies. That the farmers of New Hampshire can supply these, without outside aid, there can be no reason to doubt. Our present average yield is but thirty-four and a half bushels per acre. Most of the varieties cultivated are of light-weights. Our oat acreage is less than three per cent of our arable area. The bestowal of increased thought and energy upon this crop, a considerable increase of its acreage and a wise care in the selection of seed, accompanied by an enterprising purpose to double it, would easily lead to the attainment of this end. XVII. AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. But not only as respects the oat crop ought we, as New Hampshire farmers, to make advances, but along the line of all the cereals as well; indeed, of all the agricultural products with which we have to do; of the root crops and grass crops, of the returns of our flocks and herds and dairies. I have never despaired of the future of our New Hampshire agriculture. I have seen the populations of many of our farming towns diminishing year after year. I have seen farm after farm given up first to pasturage and afterward to forest. I have seen the product of many, still worked, growing less year by year, yet I have ever been confident of our future. In the development of this great nation thousands of our best and ablest men and women have been called to other states to assist in laying there the same foundations their forefathers had helped to lay here. We have missed them, and their absence has been felt severely. Still, our dear old commonwealth has yet left to her sons and daughters just as good; brains as active, eyes as keen, arms as strong, hearts as noble and heroic. To despair of our agriculture under the shadow of these fleeting clouds is to yield to a fear unworthy of our lineage, and to confess to a blindness as to what is transpiring all about us, of which we should all be ashamed. For the temporary dullness in the move ments of the great interest to which we are devoted is but the pause which always precedes transition, the preparation for a new departure, the taking of breath for a rise to a higher plane of life and enterprise. During my agricultural life I have seen the mowing-machine and reaper appear for the first time in our fields to displace the scythe and cradle; the wheel horse-rake, to substitute for tedious toil a pleasant recreation; the hoe and clumsy spike-tooth harrow, slow in their imperfect work, yield to soil-pulverizers which do better work in half the time. I have had the pleasure to welcome the advent of the tedder, the manure-spreader and the seed-sower, which have changed the tedium of coarse labor to pleasant occupation. And just now we are all rejoicing at the coming of the sulky plow, upon which the farmer rides forth alone in the morning, and, after a short day's work, returns but little fatigued, leaving behind him in his field two acres of inverted sod as the result of his nine or ten hours' work. By the aid of this one implement he has broken up twenty-five per cent more ground in a day than he formerly did, and at one third of the expense. Surely, if any one has reason to bless the inventive genius which has done so much to increase the efficiency of the machinery employed in his occupation, it is the farmer. But we must not forget that there is a moral progress, of far more value than any of a physical nature, which directs the latter and stimulates its activity. Our New England character has doubtless been a most important power in moulding for good the successive longitudinal belts of new states which from one decade to another have come into being upon our western frontier. Yet, the strength of this has been moral mainly, based upon intelligence, correct ideas of religious liberty and restraint; clear convictions of right and wrong and of the personal obligations due from the individual to his Creator, to his neighbor, and to the state. The strength of the state and the prosperity of its industries rest clearly upon the character of its citizens. It was their moral, and not their physical, power which enabled that little band of conscientious, liberty-loving men and women up in the valleys of the Waldensian Alps to defy for ages the assaults of the papal power, until a united Italy called them down to the plains to establish everywhere, from the head-waters of the Po to the Strait of Messina, the great principles which they had preserved in purity to the appointed time. Let us remember that we are not farmers only, but citizens as well, and a part of the state. The time is fast passing and, it is to be hoped, forever, when a tyrannical ruler can boast, "The state, it is I." The time is already here when its free-born citizens can say, "We are the state!" Let us read again, and thoughtfully, the words of Sir William Jones: "What constitutes a state? Not high raised battlements or labored mound, Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. With powers as far above dull brutes endued, In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain." THE GARDEN FENCE. In the last report of the Massachusetts Board is a paper with this title, given at the meeting at Framingham, December, 1885, by Prof. L. H. Bailey, of the Michigan Agricultural College. "It is full of meat," and very suggestive of thought. We copy it, with full credit, with the assurance that nothing more valuable can be found to fill the space it occupies. THE GARDEN FENCE. BY PROF. L. H. BAILEY, JR., OF THE MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. Horticulture, the art, is old. It had its origin with twin agriculture, in the fertile valleys of Asia, while yet the world was new. Man early learned to till the soil. He was a farmer. The earth gave him her fruitage. He selected and improved it. Generation after generation the slow increment of progress accumulated. The fruits of the first garden gave place to others. Gradually the old were lost, and the best were scattered to the four quarters of the globe with the early migrations of men. The history of many of our cultivated plants is almost a history of the human But with the gift of fruits, God sent other friends, disguised. Weeds originated when cultivation originated. There are no weeds where there is no cultivation. They are enforcers of duty. They early punished neglect with the consuming growth of tares. They have always been coercers of improvement. It is singular that we do not recognize this fact. Even Virgil was alert to it: race. "The father of human kind himself ordains That man himself, by pondering, might divine All mysteries, and in due time conceive The varying arts whereby we have leave to live." Surely ours is a goodly heritage. Until our time has man improved upon nature, till the first parents of cultivated plants are lost, and we are bewildered with endless variety. If we cannot discover the devious path by which every fruit has come through the centuries, gathering here and there an element of that mysterious something which better fits it for the use of man, we can, nevertheless, enjoy an heritage which surpasses the hanging wonders of Babylon or the fabled gardens of the Hesperides. Perhaps we are approaching the limits of this development. Certainly our methods of cultivating are not essentially different from those which find record in Columella or in the verse of Virgil, methods which in essence were old when those authors The ancient art appears to have taken on a fixedness which is indicative of staid old age. We plow, and sow, and reap as did our fathers. If we reap more than they, it is chiefly because we have improved a little more in the line of their improvement. Surely here is not a field for the impetuous Yankee, who would conquer countries of which his father had never heard, who is irrepressible in any enterprise which promises profit, and demands business, brass, and brains. wrote. In 1795 a short and unpretentious article on grafting appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of England. The writer had observed that in England the most disastrous of the diseases of the apple and pear was the canker, a browning and dying of the younger shoots. It was the common opinion among orchardists that this disease is caused by a deterioration of the variety; the older varieties were running out. The writer opposed this view, and assumed that the disease had been conveyed, in each particular instance, by unhealthy scions. He conducted a series |