1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 329 



MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



BY JAMES S. GRINNELL OF GREENFIELD. 



To write upon the farming of Massachusetts, is, to use an 

 agricultural simile, much like " threshing old straw," having 

 as a subject been most thoroughly canvassed, — as declining 

 or advancing, according to the views taken of it by those 

 more or less informed, — in essays, in wise or unwise scrib- 

 blings, in agricultural and other papers, and as discussed in 

 farmers' institutes and clubs. A somewhat labored paper 

 was read before this Board in 1882, when it was believed to 

 be shown that, in the growth of the agricultural population ; 

 in the much greater comforts and even luxuries now enjoyed ; 

 in the intellectual and educational advance ; and in the vastly 

 increased returns from the whole agricultural products, not- 

 withstanding a great diminution in some principal articles 

 of food consumption, — the farmers of Massachusetts were 

 much better off than they were forty years ago ; and recent 

 examination confirms this judgment. 



The farming and farm productions of Massachusetts have 

 been and often are slightingly mentioned and ridiculed by 

 farmers and newspaper writers and politicians of other newer 

 and larger States, who usually, in merely regarding the 

 enormous productions of those States as the only test of 

 what farming should be, seem to be quite unmindful of the 

 part Massachusetts men have taken and now hold in forming 

 the agriculture of the country, in developing and maintaining 

 the best rules and principles of good husbandry, and origi- 

 nating the implements by which these great results have been 

 accomplished ; and also the prominence Massachusetts now 

 holds, by her Board of Agriculture, her Agricultural College, 



