The more I consider the present state of our Agriculture, the more emphatic is my discontent with the farmer's present sources and command of power. The subjugation and tillage of a farm, like the running of a factory or furnace, involves a continual use of Power; but the manufacturer obtains his from sources which supply it cheaply and in great abundance, while the farmer has been content with an inferior article, in limited supply, at a far heavier cost. Yet the stream which turns the factory's wheels and sets all its machinery in motion traverses or skirts many farms as well, and, if properly harnessed, is just as ready to speed the plow as to impel the shuttles of a woolen-mill, or revolve the cylinders of a calico-printery. Nature is impartially kind to all her children; but some of them know how to profit by her good-will far more than others. No doubt, we all have much yet to learn, and our grandchildren will marvel at the proofs of stupidity evinced in our highest achievements; but I am not mistaken in asserting that, as yet, the farmers' control of Nature's free gifts of power is very far inferior to that of nearly every other class of producers. I have been having much plowing done this Fall--in my orchards, for what I presume to be the good of the trees; on my drained swamp, because it is not yet fully subdued and sweetened, and I judge that the Winter's freezing and thawing will aid to bring it into condition. And then my swamp lies so low and absolutely flat that the thaws and rains of Spring render plowing it in season for Oats, or any other crop that requires early seeding, a matter of doubt and difficulty. All the land I now cultivate, or seek to cultivate, has already been well plowed more than once; no stump or stone impedes progress in the tracts I have plowed this Fall; yet a good plow, drawn by two strong yoke of oxen, rarely breaks up half an acre per day; and I estimate two acres per week about what has been averaged, at a cost of $18 for the plowman and driver; offsetting the oxen's labor against the work done by the men at the barn and elsewhere apart from plowing. In other words: I am confident that my plowing has cost me, from first to last, at least, $10 per acre, and would have cost still more if it had been done as thoroughly as it ought. I am quite aware that this is high--that sandy soils and dry loams are plowed much cheaper; and that farmers who plow wall (with whom I do not rank those who scratch the earth to a depth of four or five inches) do it at a much lower rate. Still, I estimate the average cost in this country of plowing land twelve inches deep at $5 per acre; and I am confident that it does not cost one cent less.