FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 141 



grasses, coarse and fine, were intermixed. The award 

 of $1000 was to D. C. Henderson of Sandusky, Ohio. 

 The report of the committee abounds in details, but 

 no statistics of breakage are given, whence, perhaps, 

 it may be inferred that the havoc witnessed in the 

 preceding year had duly admonished the manufactur- 

 ing experts, leading them to adopt, mentally, a stand- 

 ard for design and workmanship approaching to that 

 presented by Dr. Holmes in his poem entitled the 

 "One Hoss Shay." This retrospect will supply the 

 historically minded reader with two dates — that when, 

 what to modern generations has been known as the 

 scythe, first came into use, being the product of a 

 Massachusetts inventor; and that when this hitherto 

 universal implement began to be supplanted, and the 

 new era in grass-cutting began. 



The report contained the following commentary: 

 "The trustees have now done all that lies in their 

 power to introduce the mowing machine into use, as a 

 great labor-saving implement. They hope not only 

 that it will be adopted, but that it will lead the v/ay 

 to the use of others, equally labor-saving and quite as 

 essential to the prosperity of agriculture in Massa- 

 chusetts." 



In 1857 George Williams Lyman was chosen presi- 

 dent of the society in place of John C. Gray, resigned. 

 The trustees appropriated $200 for the importation 

 from England of two hay-making machines, known as 

 "tedders." On arrival, the next year, one was placed 

 with President Lyman, at his farm in Waltham, and 

 one with George B. Loring, a trustee, at his farm in 

 Salem. Of their working each made a report, which 

 was warmly commendatory. Both the reports were 

 published in one of the pamphlet issues of the society, 



