FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 



The first throws light upon the relative progress in 

 invention, in the line of agricultural utility, in this country 

 and in England, and is contained in a communication from 

 Col. Timothy Pickering, published in the Journal in 1820. 

 The subject was the comparative value of the labor of oxen 

 and of horses, in farming operations. The writer expressed 

 preference for the former, and, while recognizing the fact 

 that horses were generally preferred in England, quoted a 

 remark contained in a then recent discussion of the subject 

 by Sir John Sinclair, president of the British Board of 

 Agriculture. The remark was: "The principal objection 

 to the use of oxen is the difficulty of shoeing them." Upon 

 this the writer of the communication says : u The facile mode 

 of shoeing oxen in New England would remove that objec- 

 tion, and I take the liberty of suggesting the propriety of 

 the trustees of our State society of agriculture, communi- 

 cating to Sir John a drawing and description of our simple 

 frame and apparatus for shoeing oxen, for the information 

 of British agriculturists, to whom we are so much indebted 

 for instruction and examples in the most approved prac- 

 tices in husbandry." 



The final volume of 1832 contained an article by John 

 Lowell, who had been a trustee of the society from 1806, 

 and its president from 1823 to 1828, the subject being the 

 cultivation of live hedges. In it the statement is inciden- 

 tally made that the Virginia thorn, which had been used by 

 Mr. Quincy for setting his long hedge in 1808, had proved 

 unsatisfactory in general, because of the ravages of a worm 

 or borer at its root. Mr. Lowell says : u We are indebted 

 wholly and entirely to the experiments of Ezekiel Hersey 

 Derby, Esq,, for the possession of a plant, the buckthorn 

 (rhamnus atharticus*) which, from ten years trial, seems to 

 afford every desirable quality for a healthy, beautiful and 

 effectual hedge. I can only say, and I feel it a duty to say, 

 that I have tried this plant for six years. It is hardy, rapid 

 in its growth, of impenetrable thickness, and, so far as the 

 extent of the experiment enables me to judge, not subject 



