282 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tures, from a tomato to a field of corn, — from a pin-cushion to a steam 

 engine. 



Now your committee believe, that so long as this is the aim of our 

 agricultural efforts, they will prove to be comparative failures, as they 

 have been thus far ; or at best they will accomplish but aj- tithe of the 

 good they might and ought to do. 



Your committee believe, what agriculture needs, is not the applica- 

 tion of artificial stimulants to production, but the accumulation and 

 dijfusion of agricultural intelligence — the collection and communication 

 to our farmers of that knowledge which will enable them to determine 

 what peculiar and most profitable departments of husbandry their 

 lands and their circumstances require them to adopt and pursue ; aud 

 how to produce the largest returns from their operations at the least 

 cost. We believe this is the only way in which the end sought can. be 

 attained, and thus leave demand to stimulate and direct supply. 



In conformity with this view, we are of the opinion, that the imme- 

 diate and direct object of all our legislation and the action of all our 

 agricultural societies, should be the collection and difi'usion of agricul- 

 tural information. We have the machinery to gain this end already 

 in working order. We have only to put it to working in the right direc- 

 tion, and with the right object in view. Here are our agricultural 

 societies all organized and in working order, and in just the right 

 position to accumulate stores of the most important knowledge for the 

 farmers of the^tate. And here is the Board of Agriculture — an in- 

 stitution of the State — to take this knowledge, digest, arrange, and 

 scatter it broadcast over the State, and to suggest ^he particular points 

 on which knowledge is needed, wherein our societies fail most in 

 their endeavors to gain this object, and point out the remedy, and to 

 call the attention of the Legislature, from time to time, to such mat- 

 ters of legislation as may be deemed necessary, the most effectually to 

 accomplish the ends sought, and to remedy any defects that may be 

 discovered in the working of things. 



Having in view these two leading objects, and making all else sub- 

 sidary, a distinct and separate field of operation is laid out before the 

 Board of Agriculture and our Agricultural Societies, entirely distinct 

 and independent of each other, in one sense, and yet, in another, in- 

 timately and inseperably united — united by a mutual dependence on 

 each other as parts of a great system. Thus they are necessary parts 

 of a great whole, neither being competent to the end sought, in the 

 highest degree, independent of the other, and yet both having fields 

 of labor so distinct, that there is no liability of their infringing the one 

 on the other. 



Our position then is this : What farmers need most of all, is not 



