66 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



From an Address before the Hoosac Valley Agricultural Society. 



BY GEORGE B. LORING. 



Agricultural societies have constituted the most useful agri- 

 cultural schools for the last century. They have appealed to 

 the practical agriculturist in the most direct and forcible man- 

 ner, and they have furnished opportunities for observation to 

 the old as well as the young. When well endowed they • have 

 diffused knowledge, both by publications and by exhibitions, and 

 in this way have they enabled the landholder, who is obliged to 

 confine himself to his business to obtain his information, and to 

 apply it to his daily practice. They constitute the best of 

 schools — those in which all are teachers and all are learners. 

 And they may be made the great depositories of theories con- 

 firmed by experiment, of facts obtained by observation, and of 

 rules of practice laid down by successful industry, from which 

 every farmer may draw his knowledge, and which will be as far 

 superior to an organized school, as their sphere is larger and 

 more diverse, and their teachers more numerous and more 

 devoted to the business of farming as an honest and honorable 

 means of subsistence. 



In claiming for an agricultural society superiority over an 

 agricultural college as a means of collecting and diffusing agri- 

 cultural knowledge, I do not intend to undervalue the latter. 

 The foundation of all knowledge of agriculture is the accumu- 

 lation of fixed facts, suggested perhaps by accident, discovered 

 perhaps by science ; but however obtained, proved or confirmed 

 by the practical farmer on his land. Now to the records of an 

 agricultural society may come the tests of every theory advanced 

 from a large territory, from a variety of soils, and from a con- 

 siderable number of different modes of farming. A theory 



