FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 21 



Dexter ; trustees, Cotton Tufts, Loammi Baldwin, James 

 Bowdoin, Christopher Gore, Charles Vaughan and Martin 

 Brimmer. 



The names of three who had become members since the 

 date of the charter appear. The articles adopted at the 

 next meeting, June 22, provided among other things for 

 an annual and a semi-annual meeting of the society ; that 

 the officers and those specially named as trustees should be 

 the board of trustees, to which board the routine work of 

 the society was to be committed, and that an annual fee of 

 two dollars should be paid by each member of the society. 



The first meeting of the board of trustees was held on 

 August 3. It was voted to publish at once in the princi- 

 pal newspaper of Boston an announcement, with the list of 

 officers, that the society was now organized and that the 

 board would meet monthly, and soliciting communications 

 of a practical character from all interested in the objects 

 of the society. Another vote was passed recommending 

 that members of the society in different parts of the State 

 should meet from time to time, inviting their neighbors to 

 join them, for consultations and discussions relating to 

 agriculture, with a view to the gathering of information 

 useful in the work of the society. At this meeting was 

 read a communication from Justin Ely of Springfield, de- 

 scriptive of the practice of farmers in New York state in 

 the cultivation of hemp. At the next meeting several pa- 

 pers were read, that of the most interest, apparently, being 

 a recent English pamphlet giving account of methods of 

 treating diseases, defects and injuries of fruit trees invented 

 by William Forsyth, gardener to the king of England. The 

 board at this time appointed a standing committee to ex- 

 amine critically all papers and communications received 

 with a view to selecting such as, in whole or part, might 

 usefully be published. 



The first semi-anuual meeting of the society was held on 

 October 3. A letter from the printer of the Independent 

 Chronicle of Boston, was received, in which lie offered to 



