16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



very likely there would be differences dependent upon the kind 

 or condition of the manure, weather, etc., &c. 



The value of such multiplied experiments simultaneously 

 performed, was anticipated as being of immense importance, 

 and the result was looked forward to with great interest. 



The time fixed upon for the return of the circulars was the 

 fifteenth of November last. A meeting of the Board was called 

 upon the 29th day of the same month, for the purpose, among 

 others, of delivering to the various committees those circulars 

 appertaining to their respective subjects, that they might be 

 prepared to report at the January meeting. Upon receiving 

 the circulars returned upon the subject of manures, we took 

 pains to count them. We found that of the fifteen hundred 

 distributed, there came back into our possession one, two, three, 

 four, five, six, seven communications, one of which, however, 

 proved to be not the return of the experiment, but only an 

 opinion. Four-tenths of one per cent, of the distribution, and 

 about one experiment for every fifty-six towns ! This, it is to 

 be understood, did not occur in benighted Africa, nor among 

 the ignorant peasantry of Europe, but in good old Massachu- 

 setts, among the intelligent yeomanry, as politicians delight to 

 call litem ; this land of free schools, and in this enlightened 

 nineteenth century. Tell us no longer that the farmers of this 

 Commonwealth are wide awake to every thing that concerns 

 their interests or pursuits. Tell us no longer that an agricul- 

 tural college is indispensable for the enlightenment of the 

 farmers, but rather point out the necessity of infant schools, in 

 which the A B C of the science and art of cultivating the soil 

 may be taught and learned, where a real and abiding interest 

 may be acquired in that pursuit which, in the words of the 

 immortal father of our country, is the most healthful, the most 

 ful, and the most noble employment of man. 



In view of such a result we scarcely fe.lt inclined to make any 

 farther attempt of this kind. After what of our labor, time 

 and pains we had spent in this work, to have all our bright 

 anticipations of doing some slight service to our fellows thus 

 dashed to the ground in consequence of an entire want of 

 appreciation of the subject by the class for whose interest the 

 matter was projected and carried forward, was, to say the least, 

 extremely discouraging. 



