Excerpt from An Address Delivered Before the Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden Agricultural Society, at Northampton, Oct. 29, 1829 But the earth has suffered a sad reverse. The loss of innocence'was followed by the loss of paradise. The ground has been cursed for man's sake, and doomed to bring forth thorns and thistles, and man himself to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. From that sad hour to the present time, agriculture has required our utmost labor and ingenu ity. Useless and noxious weeds spring up spontaneously, and flourish in all their pomp and luxuriance, while every plant adapted to our sustenance or pleasure, must be nur tured by our care. In our own fertile and happy land, how few plants are the native products of the soil? With the exception of your Indian corn, your whole farms are stocked with vegetables of other climes. Before these could take root, immense forests were to be removed and before they could flourish, they must be enclosed from grazing beasts, or the beasts them'selves exterminated. All this effected, your constant labor and care are requisite to defend the tender plant from weeds, insects, and reptiles, and to mel low the earth that it may expand its roots and grow to maturity. In rearing animals, your task is not less difficult. Those which are fitted to be useful, either for food, labor, or cloth ing, and which you would, therefore, domesticate, are gra mmlvorous, and must be restrained from access to such vegetables as you wish to preserve. They are mostly of foreign origin, and unable to subsist in this climate without your care. You must therefore provide for them food and shelter, during the inclement winter, and protect them from beasts of prey. The hawk watches for your poultry by day and the fox by night. The wolf in your sheep-cot, gives ocular demonstration that Samson was not more valiant among the Philistines, nor ever wielded a jaw-bone with better success. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.