--Now I am not commending Steam as the best source of power in aid of Agriculture. I hope we shall be able to do better ere long. I recognize the enormous waste involved in the movement of an engine, boiler, etc., weighing several tons, back and forth across our fields, and apprehend that it must be difficult to avoid a compression of the soil therefrom. A stationary engine and boiler at either end of the field, hauling a gang of plows this way and that by means of ropes and pulleys, must involve a very heavy outlay for machinery and a considerable cost in its removal from farm to farm, or even from field to field. Either of these may be the best device yet perfected; but we are bound to do better in time. Precisely how and when the winds which sweep over our fields shall be employed to pulverize and till the soil, are among the many things I do not know; but, that the end will yet be achieved, I undoubtingly trust. I know somewhat--not much--of what has been done and is doing, both in Europe and America, to extend and diversify the utilization of wind as a source of power, and to compress and retain it so that the gale which sweeps over a farm to-night may afford a reserve or fund of power for its cultivation on the morrow or thereafter. I know a little of what has been devised and done toward converting and transmitting, through the medium of compressed air, the power generated by a waterfall--say Niagara or Minnehaha--so that it may be expended and utilized at a distance of miles from its source, impelling machinery of all kinds at half the cost of steam. I know vaguely of what is being done with Electricity, with an eye to its employment in the production of power, by means of enginery not a tenth so weighty and cumbrous as that required for the generation and utilization of Steam, and by means of a consumption (that is, transformation) of materials not a hundredth part so bulky and heavy as the water and steam which fill the boilers of our factories and locomotives. I am no mechanician, and will not even guess from what source, through what agencies, the new power will be vouch-safed us which is in time to pulverize our fields to any required depth with a rapidity, perfection, and economy, not now anticipated by the great body of our farmers. But my faith in its achievement is undoubting; and, though I may not live to see it, I predict that there are readers of this essay who will find the forces abundantly generated all around us by the spontaneous movement of Wind, Water, and Electricity--one or more, and probably by all of them--so utilized and wielded as to lighten immensely the farmer's labor, while quadrupling its efficiency in producing all by which our Earth ministers to the sustenance and comfort of man. XLVIII. RURAL DEPOPULATION.