262 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



ANNUAL ADDRESS, 



Delivered at the Pavilion, Thursday Evening, October 7, by Hon. I. N. Hoag. 



Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen : When I received 

 the unanimous invitation of your Board of Agriculture to deliver the 

 annual address on this occasion, I frankly acknowledge that I felt 

 somewhat nattered. To be called upon to address so large and intel- 

 ligent a body of one's fellow-citizens on an occasion of so much 

 importance as their annual harvest feast, when all the industrial 

 classes come together, bringing with them the best products of a 

 year's enterprise, skill, and industry, as free offerings upon the altar 

 of their country's material prosperity, it is indeed an honor to be 

 selected to give voice to their sincere thanksgivings and festive 

 rejoicings. 



But, sir, there are other reasons why I feel nattered and proud of 

 this occasion. In selecting a practical farmer to deliver the annual 

 address at your agricultural fair, your Board has stepped out of the 

 beaten path in which agricultural associations have been traveling 

 of late years — has taken a new departure from the ordinary course of 

 such organizations. Why, sir, our State Agricultural Society has now 

 been in existence since eighteen hundred and fifty-four; has held 

 twenty-seven annual fairs, gathering together, each year, from all 

 sections of the State, the stock breeders, the grain farmers, the dairy- 

 men, the fruit growers, the viniculturists, the practical men in all the 

 various agricultural and mechanical occupations, that they might, 

 by association, by comparison of notes and comparison of products, 

 mutually improve each other ; that they might, from these great 

 occasions, receive renewed inspiration, renewed courage, and renewed 

 energy and enterprise; but, above all, that they might receive prac- 

 tical instructions from those competent to instruct them in the arts 

 and sciences and practices particularly relating to their several 

 branches of industry; that they might have, on these occasions, the 

 rare opportunity of listening to agricultural and technical lectures or 

 addresses, delivered by men eminent for their researches and discov- 

 eries in the natural sciences, and distinguished for their practical 

 application of lessons thus learned in all the branches of agriculture 

 and mechanic arts ; that they might drink in new and practical 

 lessons from the lips of men who have solved the mysteries of scien- 

 tific and successful breeding of domestic animals, and who have given 

 to the world the best specimens of the horse, horned cattle, sheep, and 

 swine; that they might be taught lessons in practical horticulture 

 by men whose lives, like Downing and Marshall, have been devoted 

 to originating and improving the apple, the peach, the pear, the plum, 

 the cherry, the apricot, nectarine, and other fruits of the temperate 

 zone, and in introducing the tropical fruits wherever a climate could 

 be found adapted to their culture; that the great secret of making 

 the soil produce frequent and abundant crops of wheat, the great 

 bread-making grain of the civilized world, might, on these grand 



