32 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



feel well competent to express their experiences and 

 results on paper, and partly to the fact that rural 

 clergymen of that day had to economize on their 

 meagre salaries, and personally engage in farming 

 operations, and so were well qualified to speak from 

 experience. At a semi-annual meeting in 1798, the 

 society voted to request Rev. William Welles of 

 Brattleboro, Vt., to communicate an essay on the 

 cultivation of barley. He did so and added thereto 

 full directions for the making of small beer and strong 

 beer. This addition might seem anomalous on the 

 part of a clergyman at this day but it is to be con- 

 sidered that but little use was made of tea and coffee 

 by farmers at that period, because of the cost, and that 

 small beer, or as it was usually called, "home-brewed 

 beer," was in almost universal use among them. 



In the latter part of the year 1795 the society issued 

 its first pamphlet. It contained the rules and regula- 

 tions ; a list of officers and members ; a list of premiums 

 then pending; the two premium essays on the canker 

 worm; a history and description, with results of ex- 

 perience in Virginia, respecting the then newly dis- 

 covered "forward wheat; " the premium essay on com- 

 post by Rev. Mr. Whitney; a carefully prepared and 

 clear account of the method of making maple sugar, 

 by a farmer of Northfield, Mass., who dates the paper 

 Feb. 4, 1794; home communications relating to the 

 management of cows and sheep, and to butter making 

 and tree cultivation ; and selections from foreign pub- 

 lications descriptive of the then recent and novel 

 successes of Robert Bakewell in England, in breeding 

 cattle and sheep, and of the methods in use in England 

 for making Stilton and Cheshire cheese. One or two 

 other articles were in the contents. 



Much attention was given by the society at the be- 



