flesh the South-down is pre-eminent; for size of carcass,, and length and quantity of wool, the Leicester is remarkable: but my experience is, that the fleece is too open and coarse for the good of the animal in this climate, when bred pure. A Merino, when crossed with the larger and coarser breeds, makes a hardy sheep, with good length and quality of staple. In case the price of wool should depreciate, such sheep could be very readily converted into cash at good prices. It is considered by good judges that here, and especially on our high and dry farms, this course may be better, as more profitable in itself, and much less exhausting to the soil than to cultivate flax for fabrics. Wool makes the reliable fabric for us in this climate. Flax is among the most exhaustive crops for the soil. Sheep, on the other hand, are highly beneficial for a number of years; but, like cattle, they can, in a long series of years, make the land so they cannot live on it. In the matter of stock raising, the farmer should remember that what is meant by "pure bloods" and "thorough-bred" is simply, in point of fact, that such stock is the result of observation, study and experience, and has been attained only by great expense. The farmer should never reject experience. He cannot accomplish, in one life, such results as are already at hand. The cattle, swine, sheep, horses, and even the dogs of England, illustrate the splendid success which has crowned the efforts and intelligence of her farmers. Look back, for example at the breeds of swine which prevailed in this county five and twenty years since. They were large in the bone, long in the snout, lop-eared, long-bodied, tall and gaunt creatures; and, after consuming a corn-field, required a pack of dogs to bring them to bay for the butcher; and when slaughtered were meat, but not pork. Compare such animals with those now bred, and you have a fair illustration of the difference between well-bred and what may be called "native stock." It is as true in the case of cattle and horses as of swine. Fortunately, it is not at all necessary to remark upon the relative merits of the breeds of cattle. They have been here to show for themselves. The splendid animals exhibited by Mr. Harison, the secretary of the society, which have carried off the prizes of the State society, and the other cattle on exhibition, illustrate the whole subject. We may well be proud of the change which has transpired since the first exhibition of this society; for, while the number of cattle may be no larger, if even as large, there is a most decided advance in the quality and blood of the stock. In all the purposes for which we require cattle, resort must be had to wellbred stock for improvement. The farmer must know that the care of the one equals that of the other, and that in worth and value there is no comparison.

Let us turn to the subject of horses, and in this matter but few words need be said. In an address which I had the honor of delivering before this society a few years since, the small horses then being bred were un sparingly condemned. The efforts of the government to obtain horses of good size, the paltry price which these under-size animals go-a-begging to obtain for they cannot command prices-and the large sums realized for fine and stately animals, ought to convince the most incredulous that we must have more attention paid to the improvement of this stock. We need here to breed horses of all work. We cannot, at present, breed the race

horse and the hunter, for we are too practical a people, nor the carriage horse and the dray horse, as separate breeds. We must combine the excellencies found not in the extremes of these breeds, but in the mean. We have as a county but little use for the saddle horse simply. The light grades and the general ease of our roads render carriages the most agreeable mode of locomotion, and we require horses of such size that they can. draw them with ease to themselves, and with moderate speed. High speed in a carriage horse, with due deference to the opinions of some who may be present, is of no great account with most business men. Seven or eight miles an hour is quite as high a rate of speed as prudent persons usually care to drive either for safety to themselves, their carriages, or the good of their horses.

We ought to breed horses of not less than fifteen and a half or sixteen hands in height, as our standard, and of an average weight of not less than ten hundred and fifty pounds. They ought not, with our deep snows, much to exceed twelve hundred pounds. They should be spirited, but not fractious. Compactness and smoothness of figure, and firmness of bone, muscle and skin, should be carefully regarded. Strong good colors, like bay or black, with dark limbs and hoofs, should be particularly looked after in breeding. Let every farmer look as carefully to his stock-horse as if he were to become a purchaser. Weak knees, flat feet, and many physical defects are transmissible. The farmer must not be taken by the mere show or getting-up of the horse. He must look as well for his solid avoirdupois qualities, The breeding of a poor horse is an absolute loss. The breeder of this, as of all other animals, must also study the requirements of his market. Now is the time to begin right. The drain upon the country has been large, nay, enormous. The low grades of horses have largely gone, while of the best grades we have never had but few, and they are always taken early and eagerly, and at high prices. The demand for good horses is not transient, it is permanent, and for many years to come they will command highly remunerative prices.

Whatever stock is bred by the farmer, be it poultry, swine, sheep, cattle, horses, or anything else, let the very best, and nothing else, be bred. The difference in the expense of rearing the good and the bad is nothing; the one is an honor to a man's judgment and taste, the other dishonors his judgment, condemns and vitiates his taste, and drains his purse. The one, at any hour, may be converted to cash, the other is a moth that eats, but does not sell, and can rarely bring its real cost.

Ladies and Gentlemen-I will not detain you longer with remarks devoted to specific subjects of husbandry. Your country has demanded your husbands, sons, brothers, and laborers, and they have gone; and you feel their loss in an agricultural sense, in the enhanced price you pay for labor. Substitute the works of the mechanic, as far and as fast as possible. Invite art and science, as the handmaids of agriculture, to your aid, to the utmost of your ability. Yield to the Constitution and laws of your country a cheerful and willing obedience, as the bulwarks of your liberty, and demand obedience to the laws and Constitution from all others. Remember, that he who attacks the laws, attacks not only your liberties, but the liberties of your children also. He who, by example or precept, teaches disrespect

for them, under any plea whatever, undermines the very foundations of agriculture, property and society. You have enjoyed an unexampled degree of agricultural prosperity in years that are past. Labor has been cheap, considering the prices of land and of your produce; but very powerful causes will operate in three very distinct directions against you in the immediate future. Whatever may be the effects of these causes, it is the plain duty of every farmer to use such diligence, industry and economy, that he may be able to meet all emergencies. Let him pursue the even tenor of his way, swayed by no resentments, prejudices, or passions; but not unmindful of the great events that are transpiring around him, nor forgetful of the glorious history of his country in the past. Whatever of greatness we have achieved as a people, apart from the salubrity of our climate and the boundless extent and fertility of our soil, is largely to be attributed to the varied production of our National Agriculture and the freedom and unlimited extent of internal commerce, every artery of which has been fed at the North and the South, at the East and the West, by our abounding fields. In the development and steady maintenance of this commerce, the mechanic arts have borne a noble and conspicuous part. He who chained the power of steam, and made it a bond-servant of man, struck the fetters from the son of agricultural toil. It is this power which has planted the mighty banners of our nation's agriculture npon so many and distant fields, conquered from the dominion of nature. Without this power the fruitful vales and boundless pastures of the South-West, the endless and fertile prairies of the Missouri, the Mississippi and the great lakes, whose golden grain swells the teeming commerce of the world, and our own kine-covered hills would be substantially worthless. Where sits the pioneer farmer seeing the fruit of his labor wasting and rotting as debarred from the marts of commerce, it is this which lifts his despondent head-it is this which plants hope and that energy, before which the wilderness recedes and the desert blossoms as the rose. It is upon our mighty commerce, founded upon agriculture, conducted in its countless channels by the engineer and the mechanic, whose value and influence upon society and civilization no man can estimate, that is the pride and power of the nation. It is before the advancing strides of this commerce that the wolf and the wild beast have fled from the havoc of the flocks and herds of the farmer; that the painted savage treads his war-path only in the far distant West, where the dying echoes of his war-whoop still linger; and it is by this that cities which rival the magnificence of oriental tale have been planted, as by the wand of an enchanter, where but yesterday the foot of civilization first trod. This mighty stream of internal commerce, so much our astonishment, our strength and our pride, has become thus mighty, because it has flowed, unrestrained by imposts, taxation and duties, in all its channels. It has been arrested in its free flow by no lines of petty principalities and powers, nor harrassed by petty officials at every mountain ridge or stream. We have enjoyed the free trade of a continent, and it was the gift of our UNION. The great West, sitting like a queen upon the head waters which flow to the South and the East, to the Gulf and the Atlantic, has filled with her wheat, corn, cattle, pork and agricultural produce, all the descending chan nels of commerce. In return for these she has taken the manufactures of

the East; the sugar, rice, cotton, tobacco and hard cash of the South; and the coal, iron and manufacture of the Middle States also. New England, damming every mountain stream, whose sparkling waters could turn the wheel, has gathered her skilful population from her unproductive hills, and engaged them in the manufacture of fabrics and all other articles for the field, domestic and personal uses of the continent. These manufactures in turn reload the car, the steamer and the sail, and wend their ways to the South and the West, paying tribute to us, on their flight, for the butter, cheese and other products we have been able to sell at her doors. The South, in its turn, has been hitherto the great consumer of the West, by which we have been preserved from an absolute and overwhelming deluge of her products, and have been, by this indirect aid of the South, greatly upheld in our agricultural prices. To the Middle States and to the East, the South in her turn, has sent her sugar, rice, tobacco and cotton, feeding the countless looms of New England and clothing the world with fabrics which sprung from her prolific soil. Shall the head say to the hand, Thou canst not contrive, and art not wanted? or shall the hand reply to the head, I have not forgotten my cunning, thou canst not execute, and mayest depart? No, no. We are the great parts of a mighty and indivisible whole. Whoever, inspired by folly, fanaticism or ambition, strikes at this golden circle of mutual dependence and mutual commerce, strikes a blow at the prosperity of a continent, and arrays men of the same blood, kindred and tongue into separate, jarring, hostile and warring nationalities.

"Whatever link you strike,

Tenth or ten-thousandth, breaks the chain alike."

Nor are the effects of our commerce confined at home. What we sell to foreign nations, as the excess of our domestic consumption, represents and is the increase of our national wealth. We have, comparatively speaking, no steady and reliable national agricultural staples for foreign export, except the products of the South. Europe raises precisely such products as wo of the North, and it is folly to suppose that she will purchase what she can produce, and become dependent upon us for the bread of her nations. It is only in years of European scarcity-as has been the case, fortunately for us, during the last two years-that we can hope to sell such products to her. Strike off our Southern commerce, and it would make us dependent upon them; but, establish anew the current of internal commerce throughout the North and the South, and England and France would take down their threatening banners to give labor to the dumb millions whose shoulders sustain their thrones.

In the great work of restoration, the Government has applied the logic of military power. It has called upon New York for the sinews of war, and she has responded to the call. It has called upon New York for men, and a quarter of a million have rallied to her cagles. You have sent your husbands, and brothers and sons, and they have bravely and manfully met the stern chances of war. Many cottages and houses and villages destroyed by fire; many devastated fields; many once wealthy and happy, but now scattered and desolated families; many bleeding hearts attest the fierce33

AG. TRANS.]

ness of fratricidal and civil war. To you who have given your loved ones, remember that they fell under the flag of their country. You have consigned your treasures to their graves. There let them rest. Look you to the future. Let no man despair of the Republic. In one of the Carthagenian wars, the Roman armies had been defeated in Italy, in three great battles, with immense slaughter. The Consul Varro engaged in the fourth battle with Hannibal, and was defeated by his own rashness, with the loss of his colleague and over fifty thousand Romans, who were left dead on the fatal and bloody field of Cannæ. As he retreated upon Rome, he was met outside of the walls by the Senate and citizens of the Eternal City, who congratulated him as if he had been a victor, because he had never despaired of the Republic. Let this magnanimity and patriotic charity be a lesson to us, and let us be inspired by the same great hope. Let no man then, let me repeat, despair of the Republic. Bound by such ties of blood and kindred, and by such vast ligaments of agricultural and commercial interests, no folly, fanaticism, ambition or madness can long divide us. Let us hope that the day may not be distant, when the arts of diplomacy and the persuasive eloquence of conciliation can again resume their beneficent sway. Let not a blow in the future be unnecessarily struck. A nation in civil war may be aptly typified by that fabled bird that lived by devouring its own vitals. Let no one hereafter, as in days that are past, estimate the weakness of the parts, or compute the value of the Union. Let every man live in devotion to the laws and constitution of his country. Let his loy alty be to the letter and to the spirit of our fundamental law. Let the laws of Congress and of sister States be respected. Those who teach otherwise are preachers of sedition, of strife, and of endless bloodshed. Let our efforts be to solace the broken and bleeding hearts; to repair the waste places of our political Zion, to restore the Union as it was, and to uphold the Constitution as it is; and when our eyes close, may it not be upon the "dissevered fragments of a once glorious Union," but may it be in the peace of our Country and our Redeemer, with no star of our emblem dimmed, and no fold of our flag dishonored.

SARATOGA.

To the Executive Committee of the N. Y. State Agricultural Society:

In transmitting the annual report of the Saratoga County Agricultural Society, pursuant to law, it is our first duty to acknowledge our gratitude to an over-ruling providence for the manifold blessings which have been vouchsafed to us during the past year. A bountiful harvest has crowned the labors of the husbandman in every department of agricultural life. The public health has been spared the ravages of pestilential diseases which sometimes sweep over the land. While the farmers of this part of the country have been somewhat embarrassed by the withdrawal of so many of the sons of toil to the army, this dearth of labor has only stimulated them to greater personal exertions and a more rigid economy in the management of all their farming operations. The unusual drafts made upon them by the demands of the government, to maintain the integrity of the federal union, have been met with that patriotic devotion to the public