APPENDIX. xxxvii 



These three aged gentlemen have seldom failed to be present at the 

 annual fairs of the Hingham Agricultural and Horticultural Society, 

 and their health and mental faculties are yet unimpaired. It should 

 perhaps be added, that since the gathering, Mr. Hobart has 

 attained his ninetieth year. John B. Moore. 



BRISTOL. 



By some unfortunate calculation, — the reverse of the astrono- 

 mers, who are always figuring a derangement of the machinery of 

 the heavens, and a consequent collision of a wandering comet with 

 the sun or his unworthy satellite, our earth, — our political man- 

 agers contrived to bring into conjunction the convention, which 

 was to decide whether Massachusetts could be lassoed and cor- 

 ralled, or really was free to roam the plains and choose her own 

 rider, and the gatherings of our fairs last autumn ; and many of 

 us had to apportion the time as best we could between the primary 

 duty of attending to the State, and the secondary one of attending 

 to her eldest progeny, Agriculture. Consequently your delegate to 

 Taunton had but one day there, — the last, and evidently not the 

 best, — the pens showing an aching void of stock, and the few gal- 

 linaceous remnants giving vent on his arrival to quite uncertain 

 and adumbrated resonances, denoting too long exposure to the 

 night air, and incomplete filling of the gastric regions. In fact the 

 fair grounds would have presented to a mind conversant with the 

 principles of geology, a correlative of one of those epochs in which 

 are found at its close one or more representative types of all the 

 animals and plants which had existed in profusion before its de- 

 cline, but it would have required the abilities of a Cuvier or an Agas- 

 siz, and much more time than was allowed your delegate, to have 

 restored, even in imagination, the denizens of the cattle pens, and 

 the horse-sheds, from a study of the types before him, and he was 

 fain to take the word of the delegate from the Bristol Society, and 

 gather from the report of the committee, that all was as it should 

 be in regard to the exhibition of animals, the attendance of visitors, 

 and the other ordinary concomitants of an agricultural exhibition ; 

 and from what your delegate could learn by inquiry, this forty- 

 eighth annual fair of this respectably aged society, was among its 

 best, especially in its exhibitions of working cattle and horses, 

 thoroughbred animals and sheep, fat cattle and display of poultry, 

 and swine ; the State Lunatic Asylum competing in most of these 



