MEETING AT HAVERHILL. 7 



that are held in various parts of the country. It was an 

 experiment on the part of the Board at the time the institution 

 was organized, and I remember, too, that it was an experi- 

 ment which, in the minds of many of the Board, did not 

 promise much. But the success which has attended these 

 meetinofs has encouraged us to continue them, until at last 

 they have become a part of the agricultural educational system 

 of the Commonwealth. 



It is manifest that the Board of Agriculture of this State, 

 founded now more than twenty years ago, has become at 

 last, as it were, a Farmer's College, and the members of the 

 Board, representing as they do the practical farmers of the 

 State, bring together in these meetings the results of the prac- 

 tical operations of the farmers in this State. They represent 

 the practical agriculture of the Commonwealth exactly as the 

 Agricultural College represents the endeavors to develop the 

 scientific culture here for the benefit of the farmer. The 

 Board is the natural outgrowth of the agricultural societies of 

 the Commonwealth. These institutions, founded early in the 

 history of agricultural investigations, have become at last the 

 Agricultural Institutes in our land. They were guided and 

 controlled and perfected by the ablest men among us. In 

 this State and in other States, the learned men and statesmen 

 gathered about these associations for the purpose of con- 

 trolling and developing what to them was the great funda- 

 mental interest of the country. It was an occupation which 

 attracted the attention of the founders of the Republic ; and 

 among the most earnest advocates of agricultural societies 

 were Washington — " the father of his country," the first presi- 

 dent, — and Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Inde- 

 pendence. Here in Essex County, the leading and powerful 

 men took their stand in this direction. The founder of the 

 Essex Agricultural Society, Timothy Pickering, was among 

 the ablest men of his time, and after he had performed great 

 service in the field, as a colonel in the Revolutionary War, in 

 the cabinet, as secretary of state and of war, and as sena- 

 tor from Massachusetts, he felt proud to retire to his farm 

 and establish the Essex Agricultural Society as the best mode 

 in which he could impart his information to the people, and 

 the best mode in which they could learn those processes by 



