Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1873 [PAGE 202]

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198 position that requires discussion and agitation to get it properly adjusted. We want organizations for the proper discussion and elucidation of these, as free as may be from the bias of partisan politics, but bringing those who have a common interest in the work and products of agriculture together, to deliberate upon the farmer's political economy. There should be the same tolerance and freedom of discussion as I have instanced in religious exercises, but the agricultural class, of all others, should be considering the changed relations in which they stand to production and consumption. Clubs tending to this are already rapidly organizing—clubs looking to sale of products and the purchase of necessities. These must, of necessity, more or less consider many economical questions. 3. Our rural communities need, also, clubs organized for the study and discussion of rural topics, that shall be more thorough and frequent in their work than our ordinary clubs can be. One of these should have its scientific committees, who should report what plants and trees are native in the neighborhood, what animals and insects abound, and their effect on the crops; the nature of our soils and the peculiarities of our climate. They should explain the failure of the butter to u come,'7 and why the bread does not rise. It should have its literary side also, and the rhyme and reason of country life should be furnished by its proper committee, who should ransack the pages of Hesoid and Virgil, Cato and Columella, Tusser and Thomson, f y what has been worthily said of rural life and rural affairs. It should hold its weekly meetings at the house of one of its members, and a part only of the time should be devoted to business. It should have its refreshments and its social hour. It should welcome all worthy outsiders, without reference to membership, and endeavor at once to learn to teach and to be happy.

CATTLE BEABING-.

B Y E. L. LAWRENCE, HEAD FARMER.

"The object of agriculture is to develop from the soil the greatest amount of certain kinds of vegetable and animal produce at the least cost." The object of cattle rearing, an important branch of agriculture, is to produce the largest amount of milk, butter, cheese and beef, in the shortest time and at the least exjjense, and in quality that will sell for the largest amount of cash. Cattle rearing bears so directly upon every operation of the farm, that I shall not attempt to exhaust the subject in