AGKICULTUKE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



PKOGKESS IJST AGKICULTUKE. 



From an Address before the Berkshire Agricultural Society. 



BY THOMAS ALLEN. 



Sixty years ago last month, the Berkshire Society for the Pro- 

 motion of Agriculture and Manufactures, was organized in 

 Pittsfield, and is the oldest existing continuous county organ- 

 ization of the kind in the United States. 



The seed of this exhibition was planted in 1807, when Elka- 

 nah Watson tethered a merino ram and ewe under the old 

 elm on the " green " in the centre of the town. This led to 

 the introduction of merino sheep, principally from the flock 

 of Chancellor Livingston, of the State of New York. Then 

 came, by the importation of Mr. Watson, the Holderness or 

 Teeswater cattle, bred in England probably from the Dutch, 

 and which by subsequent mixing with the blood of the Devons, 

 gave to this country its red oxen, and established or modified 

 the stock known as native cattle. In 1810 came a show which 

 was the forerunner of similar events to come, being voluntary 

 and without organization or rewards, and a respectable result 

 of a simple published appeal to the farmers. At this period, 

 while civil war was raging in Spain, one of your citizens, Mr. 

 Jonathan Allen, was in Lisbon, where he went to find some of 

 the celebrated flocks of Spanish merino sheep known as the 

 Transhumantes or travelling race, which had been confiscated 

 by some of the Spanish juntas and sent there for sale. He 

 brought away one hundred, and appeared in this town with a 

 portion. of them in November, 1810. Where now the Cots- 

 wold feeds in the pastures of your president, fifty to sixty years 

 l* 



