432 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUEE. 



for premiums in the future would be careful to state more 

 definitely their ages, and our fair friends may rest assured that 

 any knowledge so obtained will never l^e used to their prejudice. 



Geo, M. Brooks, Chairman. 



MIDDLESEX NORTH. 



From the Report of the Committee on Bread. 



The committee to whom was assigned the duty of awarding 

 premiums on bread, have dissected and tasted the several speci- 

 mens presented, and would take this opportunity to congratulate 

 the husbands and fathers upon the happy results to which their 

 wives and daughters have come in reducing their several theories 

 to practice, in the manufacture of so much good bread as has 

 been exhibited to-day — an article much needed in this com- 

 munity, and entering so largely into our food that it has long 

 been designated " the staff of life." The vast improvement in 

 this article, the last few years, is attributed, in a great measure, 

 to the judicious step the trustees of agricultural societies have 

 taken in awarding premiums as incentives to rouse the latent 

 powers of the female mind to produce something better than 

 has been made before. Is it a matter of economy, husbands 

 and wives, to patronize the baker, who makes music in our 

 streets with his jingling bells, to notify us to be on the look-out, 

 lest we fail to replenish our pantries with his dry and hard 

 crackers, his biscuit and brick loaves, (light as air, to make us 

 think he has given us good bargains,) — large enough, at least, 

 for the price, but when l)roken, are like the puff-ball of pumpkin 

 size, which, if pressed, contracts itself so tbat it may be put in 

 a nut shell ? Would it not be better policy to give the extra 

 money you pay the baker for making his bread, (over and above 

 the raw material,) to your daughters, to encourage them to roll 

 up their sleeves and march up to the kneading trough, and 

 make an effort to grace your family tables with their domestic 

 loaves, instead of the inferior articles furnished by the baker ? 

 We are paying too dearly for our bread from the baker's cart. 

 The time, we hope, is not far distant, when mothers will feel 

 that their daughters are not qualified to become helpmeets to 



