time and his muscle as the proprietor of an air-gun shooting gallery, or selling shaving soap from house to house, in the streets of our cities. I accidentally met one of these last named gentlemen not long ago in my own town. His boots were large and heavy; his face young and fresh, and his arms stout. He carried in one hand a small wooden trunk, from which the lock had been broken, the lid being fastened by a leather strap. He met me with an air born of some brass and some conceit, and showed me his wares with an awkward gesture, but one which would have been full of grace had he held the nibs of a scythe-snath in his hands. In one corner of his box he had a dozen cakes of shaving soap, which he sold at ten cents each, or three for a quarter— soap of our own manufacture," he assured me, and which would make a lather "that would not evaporate in twenty minutes!" I confess I looked upon this young man with feelings of mingled pity and contempt: with pity, thinking perhaps he had had a hard master upon some farm, who had made him work early and late with dull and heavy tools, given him few holidays, no money to spend for himself, and no books to read-with contempt, that a strong young man, six feet high, of handsome face and strong arms should be content with selling shaving soap from house to house. I should have honored this man had he been feeding sheep in a barnyard, or standing beside a bin of golden corn his own hands had grown-but as it was :-I thanked him for showing the "goods of our own manufacture" and shook my head. Let me do him and others like him, no injustice. It is true, this young man may possibly make a Vanderbilt or a Stewart, but probably he will become one of the thousands, who, unless they leave our cities for the honest, safe business of farming, will surely drift downward to poverty and uselessness.

On the other hand I can think of few pictures more full of satisfaction than that of a well tilled and productive farm, the sunny home of a young and industrious farmer, who loves his business; is proud of his clean fields and handsome cattle; kind in his family, and loved by his children and friends

who cares somewhat for the culture of mind, as well as the beautifying of heart and soul; who walks daily before the bounteous Giver of sun and shower, seed time and harvest, with a loving, believing trust, and who has few wants which his farm and his business fail to supply. The real independence of such a condition is a solid testimony to the safety and stability of the farmer's occupation, and the results of such a life are a better reply than the most compact argument, to the complaints, and sorrows, and discouragements of "hard times."

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

AT THE SEMI-ANNUAL MEETING AT

PRESQUE ISLE, SEPT. 25th-26th, 1878.

BEST METHODS OF RETAINING THE FERTILITY OF THE VIRGIN SOIL.

BY CH. F. ALLEN, D. D., PRESIDENT OF STATE COLLEGE.

The fertility of the soil has always been a subject of intense. interest to man, from the time when sent forth to procure his sustenance, it was announced to him, "cursed is the earth for thy sake." The severe toil required to eradicate thorns and thistles, to plant, till and carry home useful crops, is not all that is demanded of the husbandman. Successive harvests gathered from the same field are found soon to exhaust the soil. The earth that for man's sin was once cursed by Divine Providence, has again and again been cursed by man's improvidence. Unless the materials taken from the soil are in some way restored, the supply of plant food will soon be exhausted, and barrenness and desolation will spread over the once fertile plains.

A difference was soon perceived in the rate of deterioration of different localities. Vallies constantly supplied with new soil washed from the hills, are more slowly exhausted. Intervales inundated by turbid rivers whose sediment is deposited where the current is more sluggish, are kept in perpetual fertility. These low banks annually receiving fresh deposits,

can honor all the drafts made by successive crops. But in the early husbandry the lands not thus favorably situated were soon exhausted.

To the traveller in the east, those old seats of empire once crowded with a dense agricultural population, now present only scenes of desolation. The vegetation of fields that once poured forth abundance, and when he that sowed reaped a hundred fold, is now reduced to the scanty herbage of the desert. Amidst the desolations of war and feudal oppression slowly the forests of Europe were subdued, and the howling wilderness gave place to fruitful fields too often fertilized with human blood. The rude cultivation of early times secured liberal harvests, for the accumulated plant food was readily obtained. When the dowry that the virgin earth brought to the husbandman was sqandered, with diminished returns the poverty stricken fields reluctantly furnished a meagre supply, which was too often snatched by the warlike retainers of plundering barons from the famished laborers.

Nor need we go to the old world to find illustrations of the gradual deterioration of lands improperly cultivated. Thirtyseven years ago commissioners were appointed in Massachusetts to consider the subject of agricultural education. In their report to the Legislature these commissioners say: "Already the exhaustive process of perpetual cropping has travelled over the once fertile lands of New England, and in its desolating march is now wending its way over the fair fields of New York, Ohio, and the far West. Under the influence of this system of cultivation the crops of wheat in these States have receded from an average of twenty-two bushels to fourteen bushels an acre, or even less. And the same remarks will apply to other crops in like ratio of production. Do our farmers realize that the present system of impoverishing our lands will sooner or later end in barrenness? And if the present population may rightfully exhaust one-third part of the arable lands of the United States of their natural fertility, the population that will be here before the close of the present century will long before that period