The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1882-10-27


tion, they will do it,
The improvements in machinery, the econ
omies In fuel, the better arrangements for
transportation, are all proceeding at such n
rate that before many years the price of a
passage from Europe TO Baltimore will not
be more than it now is from Baltimore to
New York.
chemistry of the air and the chemistry of the
earth. The weather, the chemistry of the
air. can only be known from observations and
operations carried on by the State. The area
of observations is beyond the reach of indi-
viduals.
The chemistry of the soil can hardly be
known by ordinary education and skill. 1t
must first be supplied by the State to be oh.
tanned, after proper instruction and expert
ence by the farmer himself | have now in
Dictated the line of action by which Maryland
farming may be made TO prosper against the
competition of Texas and Dakota
list. To draw into our agriculture more in
| tellect, more science, more ambition. I'd. To
| offer to these qualities greater inducements for
success. 3d. To render success certain, TO
apply such intelligence and science to agri-
| cultural operations as to eliminate almost
| chances of failure. The first question is as to
the practical way of producing these results.
| The plain answer is to provide some method
| OF collecting and distributing this knowledge
| SO necessary TO the farmer.
There exists no official power in Maryland
| 10 collect data ofthe kind relating to labor pro-
duction or employment or the resources of
nature. All we know about our State is as to
| the amount of property taxable and taxed
Every particle of information about our social
condition, about the progress we are making
or the delay we are suffering, comes from the
Federal census taken every ten years. In the
in tprypnnT DpriO1 wp orn N
darkness. | can get accurate information
about France or Massachusetts. | defy any
of you to furnish reliable data about Hartford
county.
The first thing then to be done is to estab.
| fish Bureau of Agricultural information and
statistics. Your objection to this is on your
! lips-thcre is no use trying that-.it would only
result in party job, for the benefit of some
worthless politician, who, failing in every
thing else, would thus be pensoned on the
State.
All | can say in reply to that is-that if
| you have not courage enough and indie
pcndence enough to see that your society
employ good and efficient agents for you,
| then you deserve to be governed by your
| servants. They are really the masters, and
| they ought to be- But if you will assert your
determination that you will have a good
workman to do good work-you will get him
| beyond peradventure. The Bureau of Agri-
culture would have branch in each county
each county branch would have station
at every few miles and at convenient places.
| The whole would be connected by telegraph
wires, just as brokers' offices from Maine to
San Francisco are connected with New York
and simultaneously served at the stock oper-
ations in the New York Stock Board.
The weather, the prices, the condition of
crops, the supply and the demand could be
| furnished every day and several times day
| from the central office to the counties and
| thence to the local stations. Gov Vance said
the other day, at Baltimore county that the
| Signal Bureau had arranged to kindc beacon
| fires in the top of Mount Mitchell, in North
| Carolina, on the approach of frost and thus
give warning to the country in Il radius of
one hundred miles around.
The storm signals OF a week ago kept hun
Idreds of vessels in port and saved property
end life.
/ There is no reason why the farmers in IIar-
| ford county should not have II reasonable no.
| ticc of all conditions of weather. The State
Bureau, with its county branches, would sup
| ply all analyses of soil necessary.
The State Bureau of Agriculture Ought to
| be charged with other and larger duties The
| absolute ignorance in which we all live, as to
| the physical condition of our State, is simply
| Incredible
Its area in square miles is reckoned at
eleven thousand one hundred and twenty
| four But this is measured from the point
where Mason and DiXon's line starts from
| the Delaware to the southern boarder of the
| Potomac and from the Fairfax Stone to the
| low water mark of Worcester How much
| is covered by the Potomac, the PatuXcnt and
the Patapsco how much by the Chester, the
Choptank and the Wicomco how much by
| the great Chesapeake and the Susquehanna
who can tell Who has ever estimated? No
one has an approximate idea of how much
land there is in Maryland. There has never
been an investigation of the resources of the
State and no one knows what wealth of
power lies hidden in her bosom to restore her
exhausted lands and to revive and nyigorate
her agriculture. For more than two centu-
| ries an active and intelligent population lived
and worked in South Carolina For that
period the city of Charleston traded and
ilourished.
Fifty years agoa species of rotten min
eral found i'll abundance on the banks of
the Ashley and Cooper was used to macada-
mze its streets. 1t was discarded because it
made too much dust. Within the last fifteen
years scientific explanation has shown this to
be the immovablc phosphate rock and that it
lines the bottom of the great rivers and lays
in strata under the adjacent plantations
The discovery of the phosphatcs has, more
than anything else, increased the production
of the South and extended the cotton belt
through five degrees of north latitude. With
in the last two years the cuts for the Southern
Maryland Railroad, in Charles county, have
exposed an immense deposit of oyster shells,
which industry and enterprise are now con-
vcrting into lime. | can remember when
Montgomery was one Of the poorest counties
a., Sl,nn Goat h.,r
placed it second among our wheat producing
counties. look for equally happy results
| from the antediuvian deposits of Charles.
In Queen Annc's l recently saw a field
which had been in cultivation for seventy
years. Twelve inches under the surface was
a thin strata of disintegrating oyster shells
| and the condition of the land was as produc-
| tive as ever. Now no examination has ever
been made of the unknown deposits in the
| State useful to agriculture. 1t requires no
great scientific requirement to know that in
a country so largely washed by tide water
sixteen counties out of twenty.three border
on tide-must have been the scene of great
geological and physical changes.
Where numerous and rich deposits, the pro-
| duct of the ocean, exist useful-inyaluabl
to agriculture Besides the duty therefore of
a constant suspension of the condition ag-
riculture in the State and of collecting and
| distributing information necessary to the
| farmer the Bureau of Agriculture ought to
prosecute careful and thorough physical
survey and examination of all the resources of
our lands and our forests.
The discovery of the existence in abund
ance of material in Hartford county, useful
for fertilization of land, would be productive
of more happiness and prosperity to agricul-
ture than any other discovery know of, No
one knows whether such material does or
does not exist, for no one has yerinyestgat-
ed the subject.
Such bureau as have suggested is entire
ly practicable. The science, the skill and the
business capacity for execution can be readily