22 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



1840), that it has become fully identified with us. A large 

 proportion of the teachers in the county are graduates of 

 this school ; and lights from this centre are shining all through 

 the length of our land, from Maine to California. It num- 

 bers at the present time about one hundred and seventy-five 

 students. Its educational advantages have attracted many 

 to our town as a place of residence. If any attending this 

 meeting desire to visit this institution, they will be most 

 heartily welcomed there by the principal and his assistants. 



There is also within the limits of our town (about four 

 miles distant from here) another State institution of a dif- 

 ferent description ; but we regard it as a model of its kind, 

 and important to us in its relations to agriculture. It 

 presents one of the best illustrations of the capacities of 

 Plymouth-county soil under proper care and culture. Many 

 of us can remember when the farm of the State workhouse 

 consisted mainly of wild woodland and pasturage. 



Under the wise management of the former superintendent, 

 supplemented by the judicious labors of his competent and 

 efficient successor, the present incumbent, it is not surpassed, 

 in the amount of the product it yields, by any farm of equal 

 size, at least in this section of the State. 



There are two manufacturing establishments within our 

 town, to which we ought to allude in passing. One of these, 

 our extensive iron-works, is situated about a mile north from 

 this hall, on the right of the railway, as we enter town from 

 Boston. This is an old corporation, with a large capital, and 

 employing about five hundred hands. Thej^ have the machine- 

 ry and conveniences here for doing the heaviest work, both 

 in wrought and in cast iron. They have this year manu- 

 factured and sent to Norfolk, Va., an immense cotton-press, 

 having more than double the capacity of any such press pre- 

 viously constructed. Its entire weight is two hundred and 

 eighty-five tons. One of the castings alone weighed fifty-six 

 thousand pounds. It is about sixty-six feet in height, and 

 its capacity for pressure is six thousand tons on a bale of 

 cotton. In wrought iron almost every thing is hammered 

 out here, from the heaviest steamboat shaft, weighing forty- 

 six tons, down to the little nail which fastens that shoe which 

 our worthy Secretary Russell so utterly detests on to that 

 noble animal which he so ardently admires. 



