SECRETARY'S REPORT. 45 



The State has already partially attended to this duty. It has 

 established a Board of Agriculture, whose especial office is to 

 investigate and discuss all such subjects relating to agriculture 

 and horticulture, and the arts connected therewith, as they may 

 deem expedient, to disseminate among the people useful facts, dis- 

 coveries, improvements and theories, by reports and essays, and 

 to make such suggestions and recommendations to the Legislature, 

 from time to time, as the interests of agriculture may seem to 

 require. 



The State has also incorporated agricultural and horticultural 

 societies, and has annually appropriated money to be offered in 

 premiums for the best animals, crops, dairy products, improvement 

 of soils and manures, &c.; and has required in return, from each 

 society, a full and accurate statement of the process or method of 

 rearing, managing, producing and accomplishing the same, together 

 with its cost and value, with a view of showing the profits or ben- 

 efits derived or expected therefrom ; also the leading features of 

 the annual exhibition, the character of the efforts of the society for 

 the advancement of agriculture, the prominent crops grown in the 

 county or district, the success attending their culture as compared 

 with former years, and the obstacles met with ; and generally upon 

 the condition, prospects and wants of agriculture, so far as they 

 may be able to ascertain them, together with any reports of com- 

 mittees, essays, addresses, or other papers presented to the 

 society, containing matters of general interest. 



The State, by means of the scientific survey, is giving us some 

 adequate conception of our own resources for agriculture, manu- 

 factures and commerce ; of our physical geography, agricultural 

 capacity and geology ; of our zoology, botany and entomology ; 

 of our soils, mines and quarries. 



By these several methods, useful knowledge has been obtained 

 and diffused, which, like leaven, is permeating the community and 

 silently working out beneficial results. Agricultural journals and 

 farmers' clubs have cooperated, and we already see the good 

 effects, on comparison of census returns of the State for 1850 and 

 1860, in the increase and value of farming implements, live stock, 

 and farm products. 



The State has thus provided for the instruction chiefly of its 

 adall population. But the time has come when it ought to take 

 another step in advance, if it would keep pace with the progress 



