STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 53 



It may not be amiss to state that the Society at that time repre- 

 sented the great agricultural class of our population; a class, nume- 

 rically, more than half the State; and a class, too, which that very 

 year was paying into the treasury, by direct taxation, more than 

 half of a mill tax, amounting to near three quarters of a million of 

 dollars, levied the year before, at the instance of the same officials, 

 under an " act to pay the debt and preserve the credit of the 

 State." The Society continued to enjoy the privilege of occupying 

 this rear room until I8i8, when their library and museum had so 

 increased that they were in want of more room, and they applied 

 again to the Commissioners of the Land Office, then composed of 

 different individuals, for permission to occupy the front room at 

 the east end, which had been first assigned them. The privilege 

 was granted by the vote of all the members of the board, except 

 the then Comptroller dissenting, and with further privilege to the 

 Society, in behalf of the great agricultural population of the 

 State, to enter at the front door. From that time to this the cur- 

 rents have run more smoothly with them. 



You will therefore readily comprehend the gratification I ex- 

 pressed in behalf of the Society, at being able now to meet to 

 dedicate to their own use, although not a whole building, yet 

 apartments commodiously arranged and ample in extent to meet at 

 least tlieir present wants. And it is not the less gratifying to 

 know that, in testimony of the high estimation in which the use- 

 fulness of this Society is held by the people of the State and their 

 representatives, these apartments have been provided from the 

 State Treasury. 



It is also matter of great gratification that at the same time Wie 

 State has made such acceptable provisions for this Society, it lias 

 also, in the same edifice, provided accommodations for the State's 

 Natural History — a department of science which has long and 

 deservedly attracted the attention of the people of the State, and 

 bouiitifiilly shared their munificence. There is great fitness iu 

 this arrangement; there is great intimacy between the Geology, 

 Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology and Entomology of the State, and 

 its {igi:icalture. Geology teaches us the order, arrangement and 

 position of the rocks; Mineralogy teaches us where the elements 

 are found wliich, when the rock is crumbled down, give fertility 

 to the soil which it forms. We wanted a science to teach us the 



