STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 23 



realize her poverty, unless she is able to manufacture those materials 

 into the various necessary articles of life. 



No State ever possessed greater or more available facilities for the 

 support of a prosperous manufacturing community than California. Her 

 mountains are covered with perpetual snow, feeding thousands of rivers 

 and streams, which, as they wind their varied descending courses through 

 the foot hills to the plains, invite the manufacturer to successful enter- 

 prise, and point the State to the neglected means of her future great- 

 ness. 



We would also suggest the propriety and justness of offering suitable 

 premiums for useful and ingefiious inventions of every description. The 

 wisdom of a Government is in no other way so surely indicated as in 

 stimulating and encouraging the genius and inventive powers of its citi- 

 zens. Let the patent of the department be the evidence of an invention 

 and of merit, and require that the article for the invention or improve- 

 ment of which a premium is claimed, be exhibited at the Fair, and, so 

 far as possible, subjected to the tests of actual experiments. In this 

 manner all the valuable inventions and inventive genius would be col- 

 lected and associated together, and the opportunity for observation and 

 comparison thus afforded at a single Fair would very likely be followed 

 by results worth millions of dollars to the State in two or three succeed- 

 ing years. No class of machinery presents so inviting a field for the 

 profitable exercise of inventive genius as that devoted to quartz mining 

 and saving of the precious metals, and no State in the world would be 

 more benefited by improvements in this department than California. 



Some means should be adopted to engage a more lively interest and 

 secure a more active support and co-operation of our votaries of the fino 

 arts at our annual exhibitions — the professional artists as well as the 

 amateurs. 



Excellence in painting, drawing, sculpture, and music, are indicative 

 of a high state of civilization, and should always accompany and be 

 intermingled with the exhibitions of those generally considered more 

 useful and substantial arts, sciences, and invention. The sudden acquire- 

 ment of wealth, by persons in this State and the surrounding States and 

 Territories, is creating a demand for rare paintings, beautiful specimens 

 of sculpture, and elegant and costly instruments of music, heretofore 

 unknown in ancient or modern times, or in any other country. Hence, 

 the talents of our artists should be brought out, and their relative merits 

 should be known, and what medium so appropriate or place so conve- 

 nient as our 'State institution and its annual exhibition for the accom- 

 plishment of this desirable object? We would commend this subject to 

 the careful consideration of our successors while preparing for the com- 

 ing exhibition. 



It has been customary with former Boards of Directors to spend hun- 

 dreds of dollars in decorating the Hall preparatory to the Fair. In view 

 of this fact, we deem it proper to remark that an equal sum expended 

 in premiums for floral designs and the exhibition of pot plants, to be 

 placed in different parts of the room, would not only make a much more 

 natural and pleasing decoration, but, being a part of the exhibition itself, 

 would at the same time be encouraging our professional florists, culti- 

 vating among our people a general taste and love for flowers — thus tend- 

 ing by approbation and example to beautify and adorn our towns and 

 cities, and render inviting every homestead in the land. 



Our National Congress, by an Act approved May fifteenth, eighteen 

 hundred and sixty-two, established, as a distinct branch of the Govern- 



