40 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of products from the farm, will amount to f 100,000 this year, 

 according to the estimate of Colonel Grreeu. Six hundred tons 

 of hay were harvested last season, and three times that amount 

 would have been secured but for the army operations in that 

 neighborhood. The freedmen there have built for themselves 

 comfortable dwellings, and in the village most kinds of mechani- 

 cal pursuits are carried on. The tailors, carpenters and wheel- 

 wrights of their body, find constant employment. It should be 

 remembered that not long since this useful body of men was a 

 dead weight upon the government. This work has been accom- 

 plished by Colonel Green within the last few months, and the 

 facts, as gathered from him, are given to illustrate the efficacy 

 of intelligence in guiding labor to a profitable result. The 

 adoption of some such plan, in various forms, would unques- 

 tionably be of vast benefit to suffering humanity, and would lay 

 the foundation of successful agriculture in regions now lying 

 deserted and neglected. 



You will pardon me, gentlemen, for the trespass I have made 

 upon your time, in the opening of your deliberations. But 

 you know as well as I, the inexhaustible nature of the subject 

 which we are called on to consider. Agriculture, the most 

 ancient of arts, never rejects the efforts of those wlio would 

 advance her welfare, by the most modern improvements. The 

 topics which she presents are ever new, while the relations 

 which she maintains to society are the same, " yesterday and 

 to-day." In our own State she has done much for us all, for 

 us and for our fathers, to the earliest generation. She is 

 entitled to our protection and development ; and she will 

 never fail. 



In an address, delivered before the Massachusetts Society for 

 Promoting Agriculture, by Hon. John Lowell, during his 

 presidency, I find the following words as an encouragement to 

 the energy and care, which that association has always bestowed 

 upon the art, which he loved so well, and did so much to 

 adorn. He says : — 



" Let us be patient. Improvement in every branch of indus- 

 try is slow, but certain ; in agriculture, more slow than in any 

 other ; but as it is more shiv, so it is more permanent and more 

 important. Let us all, then, be moderate in our expectations, 

 hut frm in our reliance on eventual success. Our temperate 



