REPORTS OF DELEGATES. 193 



The spading match was one of the most interesting and 

 exciting portions of the exhibition, and instructive withal. 

 Not one in fifty of those who use a spade have been taught, nor 

 has he learned himself, the art of spading. Art, we say, for 

 there is a best way of performing the simplest work ; and it is 

 the multitude of best methods of doing little things upon a 

 farm, or in a garden, which crown the work, and render the 

 difference between success and failure. Let any one who 

 wishes to see this, watch a spading match and examine the 

 finished work. See the young Yankee, with all the life and 

 hurry for which he is notorious, jump at his work, start off 

 like a colt before the committee say " go," push in his spade at 

 an angle of forty-five degrees, six inches deep, and a foot back 

 from the last spit, turning up one small angle of earth, and 

 leaving another angle untouched ; and then see the sturdy 

 Irish gardener, who seems to live just one foot under ground, 

 and not to fly over it, see him place his sturdy and deliberate 

 heels to his spade. Straight down he goes for a narrow slice, 

 breaks it square in the subsoil, and leaves it smooth and pulver- 

 ized on the surface ; and as he dwells undisturbed upon his 

 stent some minutes after the Yankee has put on his coat, and is 

 seeking " Fresh fields and pastures new," the bright subsoil on 

 his plot seems to rise and say, " you have found me out." 

 This exhibition was performed in a hollow surrounded by a 

 natural amphitheatre, which was covered by admiring thou- 

 sands. We confess to a little private gratification as well as 

 agricultural pride, when we found that it was the man who 

 turns up the garden of the president of the society, who so 

 " got the start of all the world and bore the palm alone." 



I was glad to notice that a premium had been offered by this 

 society for experiments in the culture of the cranberry, and 

 that Dr. Miller, of Franklin, had, I think, some fifteen acres of 

 meadow under culture, while Mr. Edmund Tucker, of Canton, 

 exhibited specimens of successful culture of cranberries, grown 

 by him upon upland. 



The address by Henry F. Durant, Esq., which will speak for 

 itself in the annual report of the Secretary, was delivered to 

 an interested and crowded audience, and the hearty singing of 

 a glorious original harvest ode, in which the w T hole audience 



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