262 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON INSTITUTES AND PUBLIC 



MEETINGS. 



[Read and accepted at the Annual Meeting, Jan. 13, 1903.] 



Your committee take pleasure in reporting the educational 

 features of the Board of Agriculture, as they look upon them, 

 in a very satisfactory condition. 



The addresses at the summer meeting during the fiftieth 

 anniversary of the organization of the Board, held at Boston, 

 and the lectures at the winter meeting, held at North Adams, 

 did great credit to our honorable Board, and by the regular 

 system of publication and dissemination become a worthy 

 addition to the farmer's library, known as the "Agriculture 

 of Massachusetts." 



The institute meetings, held as they are in nearly every 

 section of the State, we believe are bringing to the farmers' 

 very homes the educational assistance in their calling which 

 was intended by the early actions of this Board. While the 

 institute work of the Board is very, successful and the return 

 for the cost to the State as high as could reasonably be 

 expected, the question is forced home on your committee 

 as to whether the time is not close at hand when this Board 

 should ask for a larger appropriation, and attempt to system- 

 atize the w^ork further ; whether better results could be ob- 

 tained by the appointment or election of an agent of this 

 Board, at a proper salary and with a reasonable appropriation 

 to work with, to exercise a closer supervision over the insti- 

 tute work, giving his entire time to the supervision of the 

 arrangements for the meetings and their actual conduct, — 

 is a question which your committee would earnestly com- 

 mend to the consideration of the special committee on the 

 revision of the laws relating to agriculture. 



