62 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



SHADE-TREES. 



HOUSATOmC. 



[From the Report of the Committee.] 



If the amount of work accomplislied is a correct measure 

 of the benefits arising from a specific purpose, the efforts of 

 the Housatonic Agricultural Society to adorn and beautify 

 the waysides of the county by planting shade-trees is 

 assuredly a success ; for your Committee have found, as the 

 direct result of the premiums offered for that purpose, more 

 than six hundred trees set in accordance with the conditions 

 of that offer, and indirectly the awakening of an interest in 

 the subject that is sure to increase as the good already 

 accomplished becomes from year to year more apparent. 

 We therefore advise a continuance by the society of offering 

 some encouragement, by way of premiums, for improving 

 and embellishing the waysides for the pleasure, the comfort, 

 the refinement, and the benefit, of the wliole community. If 

 this premium is continued, either every year, or at intervals 

 less frequent, the committee who are to pass judgment upon 

 the claims of the different competitors should be allowed a 

 liberal discretion in making the awards. The size and form 

 of the trees alone should not control their decisions. Loca- 

 tion should be considered to some extent. 



True, men cannot change the general features of their 

 locations, and hence all could not compete for the prize on 

 equal terms ; but then a perfect equality in competition should 

 be subordinated to the general good. No mafl should be 

 encouraged to plant a tree where it will do no good, simply 

 because he has no other place to plant it. A row of trees, 

 however fine, planted where the mountain or hill rises imme- 

 tliately and abruptly in the rear, loses its effect by the greater 

 prominence of the overshadowing background. So, too, there 

 are places where trees would be decidedly objectionable by 



