356 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



community in the value of these substances, and the honesty 

 with which they are made. 



That the record of this department, during the past twenty- 

 four years of its existence, has been alike honorable and 

 useful to the Commonwealth, no one who has any intelligence 

 of its operations, and the service it has rendered to the 

 farming community, can for a moment entertain a reasonable 

 doubt. It has awakened a wide-spread spirit of inquiry and 

 a desire for improvement never known before among our 

 people ; it has collected and distributed a vast body of inform- 

 ation which has come to be appreciated and universally 

 sought for, and has issued twenty-three volumes of reports 

 which are everywhere admitted to bear comparison with the 

 best reports of the kind published in the country. 



CHARLES L. FLINT, 



Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture. 



Boston, January, 1876. 



