CONNECTION WITH THE COLLEGE. 21 



culture. Of my associates in the labor which I have just 

 sketched to you, it is only necessary to givo the names of Fisher, 

 Felton, Lathrop, Bartlett, Wilder, Atwater, Sewall, Davis, Grin- 

 uell, Clark, Stockbridge, Bull, Stcdman, Clement, Phinncy, 

 Agassiz, Chadbourne, Tidd, Perkins, Huntington, Thompson, 

 Cleaveland, Moore, Fay and Saltonstall as the authors of the 

 pages which I have enumerated, to give assurance that the Board 

 of Agriculture has truly represented the farming interests of the 

 State, and that its deliberations are entitled to respectful consid- 

 eration. Add to what has already been enumerated as coming 

 from delegates, societies, orators and others, the reports of the 

 Secretary and his assistants, and you have an annual volume 

 valuable and interesting, and enjoying a high reputation among 

 all students of agriculture. 



It is this Board, designed, as I have shown it to have been, for 

 educational purposes, organized as it is by the connection of 

 agricultural societies with the highest officers in the Com- 

 monwealth, laboring. as it has done continually in the cause to 

 which it is devoted, — it is this Board which, by the Act of May 

 26th, 1866, is constituted a board of overseers of the Massa- 

 chusetts Agricultural College. 



In what I have already said, I have endeavored to show the 

 direction which intellectual efforts in every form have taken for 

 the benefit of practical agriculture. I have traced the way from 

 individual labors in the form of books from masterly hands up 

 to that associated duty which has been so well discharged by 

 boards of agriculture in every State where they have been 

 founded. And I have pointed out how especially our own Board 

 was originally organized for the purposes of agricultural educa- 

 tion in the hands of practical teachers. 



I consider that the connection of this board with the agri- 

 cultural college is a matter of the greatest importance to both 

 institutions. 



To the Board, which I think has richly earned this distinction 

 by the services to which I have alluded, the connection is 

 undoubtedly important. That the Board of Agriculture should 

 have been made the trustees of the college by the Act of incor- 

 poration, there can now be but little doubt ; and having been 

 deprived of this opportunity for honor and usefulness, its eleva- 

 tion to the position of overseers is but an act of justice. The 



