18 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



report of its doings annually to the legislature ; and the Secre- 

 tary of the Board is authorized to " appoint one or more suitable 

 agents to visit the towns in the State, under the direction of the 

 Board, for the purpose of inquiring into the methods and wants 

 of practical husbandry, ascertaining the adaptation of agricul- 

 tural products to soil, climate and markets, encouraging the 

 establishment of farmers' clubs, agricultural libraries and read- 

 ing-rooms, and of disseminating useful information in agricul- 

 ture by means of lectures and otherwise." From the above 

 provisions of the Act establishing the Board, it is evident that 

 its founders intended it as an educational system, obtaining 

 information wherever it could be found, and sending it abroad 

 throughout all the agricultural districts of the State. The 

 power to hold property in trust for the benefit of agricultural 

 education should not be forgotten. And the power granted to 

 the Secretary to appoint " suitable agents," missionaries, as it 

 were, to the societies and clubs and agricultural libraries, creates 

 a system of investigation and teaching hardly equalled by the 

 well-endowed organization of the board of education. 



The encouragement which the State has given to agricultural 

 societies by bounties, is coupled with a provision, which also 

 shows how devoted to the work of " agricultural education " 

 were the framers of this series of Acts, and how entirely they 

 intended the board and the societies as institutions of agricul- 

 tural learning. The section containing this provision' I shall 

 quote entire, for it seems to me that it has been somewhat over- 

 looked by those who receive the liberal bounty of the State, and 

 who should be willing to bestow an equivalent to that bounty. 

 The section reads as follows : — 



" Section 5. Every society shall annually, on or before the tenth day 

 of December, make a full return of its doings, signed by its president 

 and secretary, to the secretary of the board of agriculture, embracing a 

 statement of the expenditure of all money, specifying the nature of the 

 encouragement proposed by the society, the objects for which its 

 premiums have been offered, and the persons to whom they have been 

 awarded, and including all reports of committees and all statements of 

 experiments and cultivation regarded by the president and secretary as 

 worthy of publication ; and shall accompany the same with such general 

 observations concerning the state of agriculture and manufactures in the 

 State as it may deem important and useful. The return, whether in 



