No. 105.] 67 



desire to be furnished with copies of their transactions, and have 

 spoken of them in the most complimentary manner. 



The officers of the society, while they have expressed to your com- 

 mittee their gratitude for the liberality of the Legislature in bestowing 

 upon the society the number of copies which they have annually 

 received, deeply regret that it is not in the power of the society to print 

 for themselves an edition of their annual doings for the purpose of 

 widely diffusing them among the farmers. In order to accomplish 

 this desirable result, your committee would recommend that they be 

 empowered to furnish one bound copy for each school district library 

 in the State to the superintendent of common schools, receiving there- 

 for a sum not exceeding one dollar for each copy from the money 

 annually distributed to the school district libraries. To carry out these 

 views, your committee have prepared a bill which they beg leave to 

 introduce. 



The committee hope to be pardoned for saying a few words in 

 defence of the project they have ventured to recommend. Since the 

 invention of the printing press the arts have progressed with astonish- 

 ing rapidity. The rail-car has been introduced before the steam-boa* 

 Is perfected. The railroad competes with the canal before the latter 

 is completed. And it is thus, not only with these arts, but with all 

 the mechanic arts. But it is not so with farming! Some stir has been 

 made in this matter in our times, and the implements of husbandry 

 have been vastly improved, but in many other respects that art is not 

 one whit improved since the middle ages. The cause of this wide 

 difference in the condition of these two industrial occupations is not 

 to recondite for explanation. The mechanic arts have improved most 

 rapidly since the invention of printing, because every improvement 

 has been recorded and published. Since that memorable era, many 

 a long lost art has been recovered, but no one art has been lost. 

 Formerly the acquirements of one generation were forgotten by their 

 successors. Isolated individuals, ignorant of each other's doings, 

 were laboring without concert of action, re-inventing what was 

 already known, and wasting a laborious life to little or no purpose. 

 It is not wonderful that the progress of the arts wasthen slow and 

 irregular. 



This lamentable uncertainty and irregularity clings to the farmer to 

 this hour. The accumulated experience of a long and useful life is 

 utterly thrown away. It is transmitted to no succcessor, and preserved 



