A fertile soil alone does not carry agriculture to perfection. Elias Hasket Derby More Quotes by Elias Hasket Derby More Quotes From Elias Hasket Derby When harvests are exuberant, joy and health follow in their train; but let delusive prosperity draw industry from agriculture; let an insiduous disease attack one of its important products; let an insect, or a parasite, fasten on a single esculent, and mark the effect upon commerce and human life. Upon such an event all business is deranged. Elias Hasket Derby agriculture important joy Agriculture has become essential to life; the forest, the lake, and the ocean cannot sustain the increasing family of man; population declines with a declining cultivation, and nations have ceased to be with the extinction of their agriculture. Elias Hasket Derby agriculture ocean men