566 [Assembly 



SARATOGA. 



In obedience to the requirements of the law making it the duty 

 of the presidents of tlie several county agricultural societies in 

 this State '• to transmit to the Executive Committee of the New- 

 York State Agricultural Society, all such reports or returns as 

 they are required to demand and receive from applicants for pre- 

 miums, together with an abstract of the proceedingSv during the 

 year," the undersigned, actirg in behalf of the president of the 

 Saratoga County agricultural Society, submits the following 



' Report : 



Very little attention has been paid by our society to that pro- 

 Tision of the law, requiring statements in writing from competi- 

 tors for premiums, containing a description of the process in pre- 

 paring the soil, or feeding or fattening the animals, &c., for the 

 reason that, probably, no essential or important discovery has 

 been made, and no new and useful information would be derived 

 therefrom. 



The cause of agriculture in this county, like everything else, 

 is progressing. Antiquated ideas and notions of farming are giv- 

 ing way to the practical experiments of modern times. The 

 farmer begins to discover that science may be applied to his 

 as well as other vocations ; that there may be theory in tilling the 

 earth, as well as in everything else. A few, whohave seated them- 

 selves in their chimney corners, and cling with unyielding preju- 

 dice to systems of a ceiitury ago, are here and there lingering 

 among us, more as a source of anaisement than instruction : but 

 the great mass of our agricultural population are willing to ac- 

 knowledge that the lights of science are as useful to agriculture as 

 to the mechanic arts. The man who, by the aid of labor-saving 

 implements, can produce four times as much nowy at the same ex- 

 pense, as he could forty years ago, is fiardly willing to admit that 

 our farmers had obtained all the wisdom in the world before the 

 utility of mechanism and steam had become known. The great 

 struggle between ignorance and prejudice on the one hand, and 

 intelligence and reason on the other, is about over in this coun- 



