98 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



semi-annual issue. It was welcomed, therefore, as a valuable 

 auxiliary in the society's work, and intimate relations with 

 it were established, so that it became virtually, the organ 

 of the society. Its founder and editor, Thomas Green 

 Fessenden, was a man well qualified, by education and in- 

 terest in the cause of agriculture, to conduct it. The degree 

 of that intimacy and the appreciation, by the trustees, of 

 Mr. Fessenden's services and abilities, are indicated by. a 

 rote of the board passed soon after his decease in 1837, 

 placing $100 at the disposal of a committee to erect, at his 

 grave, a monument. A marble shaft at Mount Auburn 

 bears his name and perpetuates his memory. 



Two volumes of the Journal were published beyond the 

 date of the regular succession, one in 1830 and one in 1832, 

 making ten volumes in all, as put into permanent binding. 

 In the final issue the editor reverted to the early experien- 

 ces of the trustees in publication, and the difficulty, then 

 found, in obtaining original contributions. He e-xpressed 

 opinion that the Journal had had an educative influence in 

 arousing the curiosity and exciting the intellectual powers 

 of the agricultural population, and recognized, in the exist- 

 ing circumstances, cause for congratulation. "At the present 

 moment," he said, " three or four agricultural newspapers 

 are fully supplied with original matter, and, what is most 

 encouraging, far the greater mass of articles are from the 

 pens of real cultivators." These ten volumes have an 

 average of about 400 pages. The collection as a whole is a 

 testimonial of the diligence and zeal of a service to the 

 public, in the doing of which no applause was expected and 

 but little was bestowed, and wherein the pecuniary outgo 

 was much arid the income small ; and it is also a memorial 

 or record of permanent value, as relating to the agricultural 

 progress of the period which it covers. In thus finally re- 

 ferring to it, two matters may be noticed which did not 

 seem to be pertinent at any point in the text as hitherto 

 written, and which have both an historical and an intrinsic, 

 that is to say, readable, interest. 



