surprising that we should, to this day, have no reliable rule by which
to make a plough, and though the model has been improved, certainly it
is yet not unlike, and so far as exact science is concerned, is on a
par with that implement as used by the Romans, and as it appeared in
ancient architecture; the form, proportion and angular relation of the
parts, and the adjustment of the whole to the power to be applied,
offer problems alike interesting to the mechanic, and useful to the
cultivator. In your ploughing matches sufficient evidence was afforded
of the fitness of the implements employed to turn deep and wide
furrows; but should we be content with such result as is obtained by
trying different models, and then copying one which is found to be
good?

Maine was so richly endowed with harbors and forests of ship timber
that it was naturally to be expected, as it has fallen out, that the
pursuits of navigation would most occupy the attention of her people.
But let not her sons look to the period when her forests have
disappeared as that beyond which her prosperity may not continue.
There are large tracts of land which when labor is no longer directed
to lumber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the valley of
the Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvial
districts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deep
vegetable mould has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not be
less permanent than those. In them the elements which support the
farmer's crop may be exhausted by cultivation or carried down into
substrata of gravel or sand. In the remote West to which so many are
pressing, the emigrant will encounter an arid climate in which
irrigation is necessary to ensure a return for the labor of husbandry,
and this involves an original expenditure which it will usually
require large capital to bear. In this climate the sun, like a mighty