wheat giving seven and four-tenths per cent. above cost, and the syrup sixty-six and one-tenth per cent. And the greater amount of fencing and tax demanded, in raising the former, outbalances the machinery required in manufacturing the latter. Corn, oats and potatoes are now selling below cost, leaving nothing for fencing, tax, or a rainy day. It will not escape the notice of the observing reader that while Mr. Rickert's crop amounts to 150 gallons of syrup per acre, the actual average product of the State of Ohio was only 90 gallons per acre, which will greatly increase the average cost of production for the whole State. Notwithstanding I have thus felt it to be my duty to speak of the overwrought statements which are so common in the west, I have, no doubt, that it will prove of great value in that region if it is cultivated with skill and judgment. It will probably cease to be cultivated in as large areas as it now is in some parts; the stripping and carting of three or four hundred acres of cane involves too much labor to be expended within four weeks with profit, probably ten acres will be as much as ordinary farmers can take care of with convenience. In view of the facts stated in this report, especially those under the head of climate, I am of the opinion that the cultivation of sorghum will not prove as profitable here as it is there. At all events, it can only be expected to flourish on the most favored positions. If planted on ill-plowed wet and cold land, it will certainly lead to very bitter disappointment. I have thus recorded the facts collected on my journey to the west and now respectfully submit them to the judgment of the committee. JOHN STANTON GOULD. PROF. E. NORTH'S ADDRESS BEFORE THE KIRKLAND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. At the second annual meeting of the Kirkland Agricultural Society, held January 14, 1863, in the village of Clinton, Oneida co., the following offi cers were elected, viz: President, Levi Blakeslee; Vice-Presidents, S. W. Gunn, S. Whitney; Treasurer, C. C. Cook; Secretary, T. B. Miner; Execu tive Committee, S. Bingham, Thomas Brockway, A. D. Gridley, Edwin Gruman, Henry Gleason, E. C. Lewis, Edward North, C. S. Parmalee, Jr., J. M. Stebbins. Meetings for the discussion of questions connected with the culture of the soil were held during the winter, under the direction of the President. The annual fair was held on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, October 6th, 7th and 8th. The use of a meadow, well adapted for the exhibition of stock, was donated by S. W. Gunn. On this meadow was pitched a convenient tent, hired from the Marshall and Sangerfield society. The exhibition under the tent was full and creditable in all departments; in some respects it would have been pronounced satisfactory even for a county fair. Apples, pears, grapes, vegetables and flowers were exhibited in such profusion and excellence, as to indicate rare skill and success in the management of the orchards and gardens which they represented. The exhibition of paintings and drawings from Houghton Seminary, and the female department of the Liberal Institute, was greatly enjoyed and admired. During the first and second days of the fair the weather was good and the attendance large; the third day was rainy. The receipts, including a balance from the previous year, were $486. After paying all premiums and expenses, the treasurer reported a balance of $150 to be carried to the account for 1864. A large audience gathered in the tent Thursday afternoon, to hear the reports of committees and the annual address, which was delivered by Prof. Edward North, of Hamilton College. His subject was "The Garden," which he described as something necessary to the completeness of a home in the country. We call it a garden, to express our idea of its sacredness and consecration to home uses and comforts. The garden is a guarded spot-a spot set apart for higher purposes than the rest of the farm. It is a spot securely fenced or hedged about, and guarded from the world's intrusion, where the poetry of farming finds expression in flowers and ornamental shrubs-in choice fruits and vegetable luxuries. The garden is the play-ground, where all go for recreation. There we forget our cares and our politics; the little duns that annoy, and the great war that desolates. The fable of Antæus is no longer a fable, when the smell of mother earth renews our youth and vigor. There is substantial profit also in the keeping of a garden. The annual profit of the gardens of the country is estimated at $45,000,000. The garden is an attractive place for the study of natural history. While there at work, or at play, we unconsciously become botanists, meteorologists and entomologists. Experiments made in the garden have frequently led to discoveries of great practical value. We give the concluding portions of the address in the speaker's own words: "The garden is the practical school in which we test our theories of cross-breeding and hybridization. The Seckel pear, the Northern Spy apple, and the Adirondac grape, are supposed to be the results of chance hybridizing. The darting of a honey-bee from flower to flower may origi nate valuable varieties of fruit, so as to justify a new reading of Watt's familiar verse: How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And plant new seedlings all the day Taking advantage of hints thus furnished, our professional fruit growers have succeeded in producing many new and desirable varieties. It was by such experiments in the gardens that Mr. Rogers, of Salem, Mass, produced his new grapes; Dr. Kirtland, of Cleveland, Ohio, his famous cherries, and Rev. C. E. Goodrich, of Utica, his hardy and prolific potatoes. It is now about fifteen years since Mr. Goodrich commenced his experiments with the seed of a wild variety of the potato, imported from South America. A full account of all that he has patiently suffered from the skepticism of friends, the narrowness of his means, the difficulty of his undertaking, and the unsatisfactory result of many of his experiments, would read like a romance. But success finally crowned his faith and perseverance. The Garnet-Chili potato is probably the most hardy, prolific and desirable variety now cultivated in the northern states. As the potato crop of the whole country amounts to more than one hundred millions of bushels in a year, worth at least $25,000,000, it is a very moderate estimate to say that twenty-five millions of bushels of Garnets were harvested last autumn. It has been estimated by an intelligent cultivator and observer, that the planting of Garnet-Chili potatoes last spring prevented a loss to the country of not less than $3,000,000; so that the new variety is worth all it has cost of time, labor, study, patience and money-only the profit comes to the public, not to the originator. He can hold no patent right in the Garnet-Chili potato; he has generously given it to the world; and now, in old age and feeble health, he is without the worldly. comforts that ought to sustain the closing years of a public benefactor. Yet, if every owner of a farm or garden, who has been made richer by the experiments of Mr. Goodrich, were to send him the value of a dozen Garnets, he would be rewarded with a tardy, yet ample and well-earned fortune." * At the last annual meeting of the New York State Agricultural Society, Mr. Orange Judd, of the American Agriculturist, proposed that a testimonial be presented to Rev. C. E. Goodrich, for his successful efforts to improve the quality and hardiness of the potato. This proposal received the hearty concurrence of all who were present, and $600 was subscribed on the spot. I am not trying to be logical to-day, but rather to illustrate by facts how much of good, both pecuniary and aesthetic, may be made to originate in the garden. I happen to have knowledge of a different experiment recently made with the seeds of the hop tree (Ptelia trifoliata), as a substitute for the flowers of the herbaceous hop vine. The hop tree is as easily raised as the seedling apple, and is worthy of cultivation simply for ornamental purposes. Its abundant seeds contain the bitter essence of yeast, of an excellent quality. It is, just possible that the time may come when a pair of hop trees will be thought as essential to the completeness of a garden as an asparagus bed or a tomato patch. We have on exhibition today, among the culinary wonders of our fair, a sample of hop biscuit, made by Mrs. Everett Case, of Vernon, and so superior in lightness, whiteness and sweetness, that they must have completely upset the discretion of the discretionary committee. * The mention of Dr. Noyes will call up to many minds here the wellremembered image of one of Clinton's early horticulturists, who would have taken special delight in such a holiday as we are keeping. How the heart leaps even at fancy's view of that Wizard of the Retort, who played with the mysteries of science as deftly as Thalberg may sport with the keys of a piano. How awkward and embarrassed he looks, until thought surrounds him with his own contemporary trees, or transfers him to that marvelous laboratory, which was as much a part of himself as its shell is a part of the tortoise; that indescribable sanctuary of natural science, or, if you will, that chaos of chemical apparatus that should have been piously removedthe building and all its contents-to the college grounds, surrounded by iron palisades, and kept as a concrete ocular demonstration that Walter Scott's Antiquary is not an impossible character. If anybody wanted anything, how natural and easy it was to go straight to Dr. Noyes for it. No matter what it was that was wanted, be it a thermometer or precocious cabbage plants; be it a steam engine or a cure for cancer; the analysis of an ore, or a receipt for a grafting wax; a sure way to make a fortune, or an infallible trap for the plum weevil, or any other conceivable pair of incongruous wants, and Dr. Noyes was always ready to fill out the order, with anecdotes of Daniel Webster, his classmate, and Dr. Backus, thrown in for seasoning. If there was a disease to be cured that other doctors pronounced incurable, or a problem in science to be solved, or a machine to be invented that had already upset other men's brains, Dr. Noyes was just the man to be delighted to do it, and take his pay whenever it chose to come. By his child-like enthusiasm for horticultural pursuits, his rare skill in managing the details of the garden, and his daily conversation, always rich in practical instruction, Dr. Noyes contributed essentially to that education of the general taste in Clinton, so brilliantly illustrated in the array of fruit that blushes along these tables to-day. Clinton honors the memory of another lover of the garden, whose name will spring to the lips of many among you, when I say that the medicine he carried in his professional rides over these hills and up and down this fertile valley, was made doubly potent by his smiling face, his genuine sympathy with sorrow, his passionate love for music, and trees, and flowers, and whatever else is beautiful and good. The memory of Dr. Hastings is closely linked with that of another lover of the garden, venerable alike for his years and his virtues, who was ordained seventy years ago as the first pastor of the first church in Clinton. That good pastor could heartily endorse the poet's assertion: "That nothing earthly can keep its youth, So far as we know, but a tree and truth." This was one of the secrets of a long and prosperous ministry. Through out a quiet pastorate of forty years, and a life of eighty-seven summers, he kept up the electric glow and freshness of feelings that belong to early manhood, by his obedience to the truth and his industry in caring for hist trees and his garden. Many of you remember how it was with Dr. Norton. You well remember how, soon after his settlement among you, he purchased a few acres for a home, near enough to the church to hear its solemn bell knolling a departed spirit, yet far enough to ensure a regular supply of pleasant walks and rides to and from the village meetings. You remember how he used to bring home from his occasional visits to the east, choice grafts cut in the orchards of his native place, and carefully set them in seed. ling stocks of his own growing. When he made pastoral visits he would take along a few scions in his pocket, and teach the pioneer farmers how to propagate valuable fruits by the easy process of grafting. If their fingers were stiff, or clumsy, or busy, the good pastor would put in the scions himself, now and then dropping a quiet hint about the wild Gentiles, who were grafted into the Church of Christ, so as to partake of the root and fatness of the olive. The productive fruit trees that were thus planted or grafted still stand as a living symbol of the richer fruits gathered from the seed of his spiritual sowing; seeds of holy thought and hopes of endless joy in that pure and sunny clime, where no frost ever comes to blight, where he rests with the departed of his people in the paradise above. Hon. Ephraim Hart did much for the early horticulture of our place. Other names might be mentioned. The history of the town of Kirkland is closely linked with a history of the fruit trees that give both adornment and endowment to the first gardens that were planted here by the pioneers from Connecticut. Cut down one of the old apple trees planted by Eli Bristol, and a counting of the rings in its trunk will carry you back to the year when Baron Steuben rode up College Hill to lay the corner stone of Hamilton Oneida Academy. Kirkland had the good fortune to be settled by men who were lovers of the garden and fine fruits. The horticultural tastes and habits of these early settlers are so strikingly reproduced in the horticultural tastes and habits of their descendants, and these tastes are so fragrantly illustrated in yonder Dianas, Rebeccas and Delawares, that one is tempted to quote the scriptural proverb, with an accommodation, and to say of them: "The fathers have eaten sweet grapes, and the children's teeth are not set on edge." Among the curious things brought to light by this year's fair is one of the rude plows with which the gardens of Clinton used to be vexed into mellowness some seventy years ago, about which time the bears might have been tithing Major Pond's crop of corn on the very spot where we are now assembled. That antiquated bull plow over yonder belongs to James |