X BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



procure drinking-water from distant springs, while the water 

 mixed in their children's milk may be supplied from a stable- 

 yard well infected with germs of disease. 



With this apathy on the part of the public, farmers must 

 rely upon themselves. No one is compelled to produce milk 

 or to accept a contractor's offer, and a co-operative agree- 

 ment between the farmers, resolutely adhered to, not to sell 

 their milk below a price satisfactory to themselves, would 

 bring the contractors to their terms. To effect this the far- 

 mers must have a thorough organization, and deal with the 

 contractors not singly but through a board of capable 

 officers. 



Milk production at low prices is fatal to good husbandry. 

 Farmers should make more crop for sale, keep more swine, 

 sheep and poultry. 



Co-operation in all large districts, in manufiicturing the 

 milk into butter and cheese whenever there was a surplus, 

 or the price offered was not satisfactory, would, in lime, 

 control the middlemen. 



Sheep husbandry shows no advance. To encourage it the 

 Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, last 

 summer, imported a hundred thoroughbred ewes of the best 

 families. These, with the rams imported the previous sea- 

 son, were sold to farmers at about fifty per cent, of their 

 cost. 



These should be the nucleus of valuable flocks, but there 

 is small hope of it. 



Our farmers are unwilling to increase a husbandry that is 

 continually threatened with destruction. Our farms are 

 subject to outrageous trespass, and sheep-keeping must suf- 

 fer until dogs are put upon the same footing as other do- 

 mestic animals, and their owners made responsible for them. 



Horse-breedinor on farms has o-reat encourao^ement from 

 the help afforded by the Massachusetts Society. The Per- 

 cheron horses imported in 1882 have met with much favor; 

 all of them are in fine condition and must prove of great 

 value to us. 



The fairs of the societies under the control of the Board 

 of Agriculture, were unusually successful last year, owing 

 to continuous fine weather during the month of Septem- 



