390 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



ing up the steps to the Capitol day after day, to argue, 

 plead, beg, even, for the life of the school, till one luckless 

 morning he fell and fractured his hip; but pain did not 

 hinder, and from the sick-room came the messages, and to 

 the sick-room were called the friends, and the work went on. 



Not less earnest or effective was the work of another 

 member, Hon. Win. Knowlton of Upton. They were true 

 yoke-fellows. His work for the college began long before, 

 and his liberal heart had met every emergency in college 

 finance, and his faith never wavered through those dark 

 days, — the result perhaps in part of its own rashness and 

 mismanagement. 



And yet one more, — the first secretary of the Board, — 

 Hon. C. L. Flint : watchful, careful, clear, concise and 

 ready, strong in debate when aroused, patient when neces- 

 sary and impetuously bold on occasion, he was a capital sen- 

 tinel on the wall at this time. 



And now they each rest, — their work is done ; but the 

 college lives its yet young, strong, enlarging life, — a circle 

 of widening influence ; and who can scan its boundaries or 

 gauge its influence? — not the historian of to-day, surely. 



So of us all ; we change, we pass off this Board, but the 

 Board lives, and never was its influence greater, or its pros- 

 pects brighter or more fraught with possibilities of good to 

 the agriculture of Massachusetts, than to-day. 



The service rendered by this Board in the successful cam- 

 paign against pleuro-pneumonia was a striking example of 

 its courage as well as of it£ wisdom. This disease appeared 

 in 1859, and the attention of the public and the Legis- 

 lature was called to it by the secretary's report ; the 

 disease was described, the great danger to the cattle indus- 

 try not only of the State but of the whole country was 

 tersely pointed out, and the Legislature called upon to give 

 the necessary authority and grant the money needed to ex- 

 terminate it. Led forward and urged onward by this Board 

 and the commissioners, the Legislature was brought to real- 

 ize the emergency, to furnish the money, to enact compre- 

 hensive laws that gave power to the commissioners, and the 

 disease was stamped out. These commissioners in their 

 report say : ' ' The commissioners are happy to be able to 



