676 MISCELLANEOUS FARM SUBJECTS 



Agriculture was incorporated March 7, 1792, and in 1794 the West- 

 ern Society of Middlesex Husbandmen was formed in Massachusetts, 

 though not incorporated until 1803. The Society for Promoting 

 Agriculture in the State of Connecticut was organized August 12, 

 1794, and published its first volume of transactions, a small quarto 

 pamphlet in 1802. This society still exists as the county society 

 of New Haven. 



The formation of agricultural societies was continued and their 

 number rapidly increased. In South Carolina, for example, eleven 

 societies were in existence by 1823. The movement for the estab- 

 lishment of a national board of agriculture was renewed in 1817 by 

 the Berkshire Agricultural Society of Massachusetts, which pre- 

 sented a memorial to Congress on this subject. The bill which re- 

 sulted from this effort was, however, defeated in the House of Rep- 

 resentatives. The following year (1818) saw the establishment of 

 the New York Horticultural Society, the first organization of its 

 kind in the United States. 



The first attempt to organize a national agricultural society was 

 made at Washington in 1841 by a convention of persons desiring to 

 elevate the character and standing of the cultivation of the Ameri- 

 can soil. It was hoped that the fund left by Hugh Smithson might 

 be made available for the maintenance of such an organization, but 

 the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution frustrated these 

 expectations, and the national society remained dormant until 1852. 



Early Agricultural Publications. During this period various 

 methods for diffusing agricultural information were proposed or 

 put in operation, very largely through the efforts of these agricultural 

 societies. Books on agricultural subjects began to appear. Among 

 these, was a volume of over 300 pages, published at Worcester, Mass., 

 in 1790, entitled, The New England Farmer, or Georgical Diction- 

 ary: Containing a compendius account of the ways and methods 

 in which the most important art of husbandry, in all its various 

 branches, is or may be practiced to the greatest advantage in this 

 country, by Samuel Deane, A. M., Fellow of the American Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences; and the Rural Socrates, or an account of a 

 celebrated philosophical farmer, lately living in Switzerland and 

 known by the name of Kliyogg. Hallowell (District of Maine). 

 Printed by Peter Edes, and sold by the booksellers in the principal 

 towns of the United States. A. D. 1800. The author of this book 

 was Dr. Vaughan, a prominent member of the Maine Agricultural 

 Society, who, in 1803-1804, likewise published a series of agricultural 

 papers and essays of much value. 



The more important societies soon began the publication of 

 information on agricultural subjects. As early as 1792, the New 

 York society published a small quarto volume of its transactions. In 

 1797 the trustees of the Massachusetts society began the publication 

 of pamphlets, or, as we now say, bulletins, on agricultural topics, 

 which afterwards were developed into a regularly issued journal. 

 The same year this society established a regular library, having 



