224 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



distinguished pomologist (Col. Wilder) "wlio was expected to 

 open the discussion. As yet, I understand there have been 

 no attempts made in Barre to cultivate the smaller fruits which 

 are so profitably grown in many parts of the State ; but I am 

 happy to know that the time will soon arrive when she will 

 enjoy those advantages in the way of railroad transportation 

 which other portions of the State enjoy, and it will then be 

 an important subject to the people of this town. The culti- 

 vation of small fruits and vegetables will then be a profitable 

 branch of agriculture. The opening of railroad communica- 

 tions will l)rin2: manufacturers here. You are to have a manu- 

 facturing village, and if you will look the country over, and 

 more especially New England, you will find, wherever you 

 find a manufacturing village, a healthful and thrifty farming- 

 interest. I think I can look forward to but a few short months 

 when all these great changes are to commence, and then I 

 shall expect that the good old hills of Barre will smile with 

 the beautiful fruits and veo-etables which are raised in other 

 parts of our State so successfully. Here is a gentleman, 

 living forty miles from the city of Boston, who is deriving 

 perhaps three times the profit from a very few acres devoted 

 to strawljerries, which grow almost spontaneously on these 

 hills, and which you can grow without the particular cultiva- 

 tion which he is obliged to bestow upon them on the sands of 

 the Cape, which you derive from your large farms of hundreds 

 of acres. He could tell you a story which would astonish 

 you. He has made himself independent by the cultivation of 

 a very few acres of the sand-hills of the south-eastern portion 

 of the State. Now, you are going to have these advantages 

 one of these days, and your attention will be turned in a 

 dififerent direction, and then this great question of fruit and 

 vegetable culture will be of more importance perhaps than 

 your grass and pasture lands. 



Mr. Converse, of Palmer. I would like to ask if any 

 gentleman has studied Hungarian grass enough to know in 

 what stage it should be cut? We raise a good deal of it, 

 but we do not think it is good hay. We think it is on account 

 of the wet weather, or else we were not rightly instructed 

 when to cut it. 



Mr. Lewis. I asked my friend Stone if I had better say 



