282 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Forestry and landscape gardening will conspire to improve 

 and accentuate their native characteristics. Connecticut will 

 yet adopt the example of Massachusetts in appropriating large 

 areas for State park reservations, like the Middlesex Fells near 

 Boston. All of which means not the relapse of our small 

 towns but their transfiguration. There are better ways of 

 estimating a place than by its population and grand list. 



Lastly, the future of the small town is assured, because of 

 its historical and genealogical importance. Every one of these 

 little republics is an Andorra ; has a history of its own better 

 worth telling than that of the second Punic War; is as full 

 of legends as Sleepy Hollow, only waiting for its Irving. 



But historical and genealogical associations beget more 

 than sentiment ; they are among the most positive assets which 

 a town possesses. They beget a filial spirit which is not lost 

 even in the busiest career or the farthest divergence from 

 home. 



Such a filial feeling is worth more than dollars and cents 

 to any community, though it repeatedly expresses itself in 

 benefactions beyond the dreams of subscription committees. 

 Branford discovered it accidentally, when it was trying to raise 

 a modest library among its friends, and wrote to a long- 

 departed son of the soil, whom few of them had ever seen. 

 He responded hy assuming the whole expense of that magnifi- 

 cent architectural plant. Mr. Blackstone had carried all these 

 years a cherished though unsuspected loyalty for his native 

 town. Instance after instance could be given of men and 

 women who have thus remembered their town, through its 

 church, library, cemetery or school, after years of absence or 

 years of apparent indifference. 



Along with this filial spirit may spring up a town organiza- 

 tion, broader than the village improvement idea, a social and 

 town-promoting society and board of trade in one, which 

 fosters the welfare of the place in a marked degree. The Salis- 

 bury Society is such an institution. In Middlefield, Mass., 

 a most extraordinary enthusiasm has been aroused, enlisting 

 college presidents and professors, men of mark and scattered 

 sons from far. On the other hand, without the use of town 

 co-operation, Norfolk, Conn., has enjoyed an amount of public 

 spirit, unparalleled in the state ; a spirit, which has been made 



