16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



country in which you would find farms, market-gardens with 

 the usual appliances of hot-beds and forcing-houses, florists 

 with their greenhouses, suburban residences, many of them 

 with beautiful and extensive pleas ire-grounds, adding not 

 only beauty and variety to the landscape, but an actual cash 

 value to the farms and gardens in their immediate vicinity ; 

 for it is well understood, that, the better the surroundings, 

 the more valuable becomes the neighboring property. Now 

 gentlemen, we meet here to-day, in this good old town of 

 Waltham, and by a special invitation of the Waltham Farm- 

 ers' Club, — an organization entitled to its well-earned repu- 

 tation of being one of the most active, efficient, and pro- 

 gressive clubs in the State. I hardly need to add that you 

 have fallen among friends of large hearts and unbounded 

 hospitality. 



And now allow me to assure you, visitors as well as mem- 

 bers of the Board, that it gives me great pleasure to meet 

 you here in Middlesex County ; and I trust, that, with your 

 aid, we shall make this not only an instructive and profitable 

 meeting, but one to be remembered with pleasure hereafter. 



Now, gentlemen, I have the honor of introducing to you 

 the Rev. Benton Smith, President of the Farmers' Club 

 of Waltham. 



ADDEESS OF WELCOME. 



BY BEV. BENTON SMITH. 



Gentlemen of the State Board of Agriculture^ — The Farm- 

 ers' Club of this town, and the selectmen in behalf of the 

 citizens generally, have charged me with the very pleasant 

 duty of extending to you a welcome to Waltham and its 

 hospitalities. By those who are unacquainted with it, Wal- 

 tham is supposed to be almost exclusively a manufacturing 

 town ; but it is largely agricultural. Therefore the people 

 appreciate the action by which you decided to hold this 

 meeting with them, sure that you will enlighten and quicken 

 them in regard to one of their great interests. 



It has been a quiet town, in which its inhabitants have 

 pursued their various kinds of business with intelligence and 

 industry, without being aware of how directly and powerfully 



