394 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



and sure knowledge, multiplying by skill and experiment, 

 until guess-work 1ms given place to fact, and we know that 

 whatsoever a man soweth he shall reap just in accord as he 

 follows nature's laws; transforming by hybridization and 

 skillful nurture till " the little one has become a thousand 

 and the small one a great nation." 



I challenge comparison with any other Board, State or 

 National, to bring results so varied, so beneficent, so lasting, 

 so practical for the good of the common people of the State 

 as this Board of Agriculture of Massachusetts ; and the 

 names of Wilder, Moore, Flint, Bowditch and many others, 

 creators in their lines of work, will never be forgotten. 

 I do not claim for it the original patent to every advance, 

 but I do claim that it has been so quick to discern, so patient 

 and conclusive in experiment, so earnest to seek, so urgent 

 to urge the new and the better, and so careful and sure 

 in its conclusions, that it has held the confidence of the 

 farmers of this State with unvarying faith to the present 

 moment. 



And not alone in the field of nature in its several depart- 

 ments has its influence been most potent and beneficial to 

 the farmers of this State, but it has gone into the homes, and 

 added beauty to them ; it has studied the roads, and sought 

 to improve them ; it has glanced at the roadsides, and they 

 have become more attractive ; in the surroundings of the 

 home it has encouraged beauty, fragrance and refinement ; 

 in the garden comforts and delicacies unknown before, giv- 

 ing beauty to the eye, pleasure to the palate, and attractive- 

 ness to rural life. 



Though we have another organization working in perfect 

 accord with this Board, whose special work is more in the 

 line of the attractive home, the social life and the develop- 

 ment of the intellectual powers, in which many of us are 

 true workers, we gladly turn to this old Board, and 

 acknowledge our obligations to its earlier sowing of the 

 seed and its present labors in this important mission to the 

 farmer of Massachusetts. These two, working together, 

 have given a new incentive to toil, have brought heart and 

 soul into the life of the farm, and enlarged the intellectual 

 scope of the fanner's vision, until to-day the agriculturists of 



