348 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the means of conveying instruction to the public. Money judi- 

 ciously invested in publication is better calculated to promote 

 the objects for which the society was organized, than money dis- 

 tributed in small cash premiums. If it goes out in driblets, it 

 is not likely to accomplish any permanent results. 



The value or efficiency of a society depends chiefly upon the 

 management. If it adopts a low standard of excellence and 

 aims to do all its work and accomplish its objects through the 

 bluster of its exhibition, which lasts but a day or two at most, 

 it can hardly expect, with any show of reason, to rouse the 

 spirit of inquiry and improvement, and to do the good which 

 the State had in view when it granted its charter and endowed 

 it with the annual bounty from its treasury. 



The show is ephemeral at best. It is no doubt a good thing, 

 so far as it goes, to get people together, and to furnish them the 

 means of rational enjoyment, social intercourse and instruction. 

 Some societies stop here. They see no duty higher than this. 

 Their capacity seems to exhaust itself with one spasmodic and 

 tremendous effort. The idea of any latent possibility of benefit- 

 ing the public by exciting thought and emulation, or by a search 

 after new facts and the discovery of new truths, seems not to 

 enter into their programme of operations. The encouragement 

 they give for accurate experiments designed to improve the 

 processes of farming or to develop the material interests of the 

 people, bears no proportion to what they give for trifles light as 

 air. 



Now that a society is capable of acting on a higher level, and 

 adopting higher aims, and attaining greater results than many 

 of our societies do, is clear enough, because it has been done, 

 and is done every year, by some societies, and can be done by 

 any one that will go the right way to work. To ascertain this 

 right way, with all local considerations taken into view, a com- 

 mittee to investigate and report some complete plan of opera- 

 tions would be able to suggest what reforms are needed. They 

 would have the advantage of the experience and history of 

 those societies whose success has been most marked. They 

 would find out how committees on different subjects are made 

 up, and how it is that exhaustive and well-considered reports 

 are the rule in all well-managed societies, rather than the ex- 

 ception. They would learn what means are taken to create an 



