FOURTH ANNUAL EEPORT 



OP THE 



SECRETARY 



OF THE 



BO!ARD or AGRICULTURE. 



To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Common- 

 wealth of Massachusetts : — 



The various duties of the Board of Agriculture have been 

 attended to with unremitting diligence during the past year. 

 Since the preparation of the Annual Abstract was intrusted to 

 the Board, the call for it among the farmers of the State has 

 been multiplied many fold, till the usual edition has been found 

 too small to supply half the demand. The returns of the 

 county societies have been systematized, — a work of no small 

 extent and importance, — thousands of packages of valuable 

 seeds have been distributed, and many hundred volumes of 

 agricultural documents of other States placed within the reach 

 of our people, by means of exchanges. Much labor has also 

 been devoted to the formation of an Agricultural Museum, to 

 be connected with the office of the Board, where it will be of 

 easy access to the members of the legislature and to the people. 

 In addition to the specimens of minerals and soils collected 

 during the course of the agricultural geological survey of the 

 State some years since, — which now number about three thou- 

 sand, and many of which have been analyzed, a few of the most 

 valuable of which have been lost, — I have myself obtained 



