"The soil of the domain is a deep loam, well calculated for tillage and grazing. About one hundred acres had been cleared before the Association took possession of it; the remainder is thinly covered with the primitive forest; the larger trees having been cut off of a good part of it for timber. Much of it can be cleared at a cost of six dollars per acre. Abundance of timber remains on it for all purposes of the Association. The land lies in gentle sloping ridges, with valleys between, and wide, level tables at the top. The general inclination is to the east and south. There are very few acres which can not be plowed after clearing. "Application for membership, to be made (by letter, post paid), to Thomas W. Whitley, Esq., President, or to Horace Greeley, Esq., New York." The Executive officers issued a pamphlet soon after the commencement of operations, from which we extract the following: "This Association was formed early in 1843, by a few citizens of New York, mainly mechanics, who, deeply impressed with the present defective, vice-engendering and ruinous system of society, with the wasteful complication of its isolated households, its destructive competition and anarchy in industry, its constraint of millions to idleness and consequent dependence or famine for want of employment, and its failure to secure education and development to the children growing up all around and among us in ignorance and vice, were impelled to immediate and energetic action in resistance to these manifold and mighty evils. Having earnestly studied the system of industrial organization and social reform propounded by Charles Fourier, and been led to recognize in it a beneficent, expensive and practical plan for the melioration of the condition of man and his moral and intellectual elevation, they most heartily adopted that system as the basis and guide of their operations. Holding meetings from time to time, and through the press informing the public of their enterprise and its objects, their numbers steadily increased; their organization was perfected; explorations with a view to the selection of a domain were directed and made; and in the last week of April a location was finally determined on and its purchase effected. During the first week in May, a pioneer division of some forty persons entered upon the possession and improvement of the land. Their number has since been increased to nearly sixty, of whom over forty are men, generally young or in the prime of life, and all recognizing labor as the true and noble destiny on earth. The Sylvania Association is the first attempt in North America to realize in practice the vast economies, intellectual advantages and such enjoyments resulting from Fourier's system.