MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 441 



MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ESSEX COUNTY. 



Plowing with Double Teams— Single Teams— Subsoil-Plowing— Working Oxen— Milch Cows and Heifers— 



The Dairy. 



Having in a previous number given some account of the last doings of the old 

 Massachusetts State Society, we come now to the Abstract of the proceedings 

 of the County Societies, as exhibited by the returns of their officers, under the 

 law requiring them to make report to the office of the Secretary of State, not 

 only of what disposition they have made and propose to make of the funds de- 

 rived from the State, but to " accompany the same with such general observa- 

 tions concerning the state of Agriculture and manufactures in the State as they 

 may deem important or useful." 



We stop a moment to remark, that even here the Agricultural Society is 

 charged to look after another interest besides its own — " concerning the state of 

 Agriculture and manufactures.'''' ISIow to this we are entering no objection, but 

 m all the annals of industrial associations, have we ever seen a manufacturin<'-, 

 or commercial, or mechanical association charged by the law-making power to 

 look after Agriculture? Well, let that pass ! It is from these Reports and ob- 

 servations that we select what follows, being guided by what it is supposed may 

 be most generally acceptable and useful, if not new, more particularly to readers 

 without than within that venerable Commonwealth — a Commonwealth of which 

 Mr. Colman has beautifully and truly written : " Let the children of I\Iassachu- 

 setts, then, love and honor their good old Mother. Her soil may be hard, but 

 labor compels it to be bountiful. Her climate may be harsh, but it gives strength 

 and elasticity to the muscles, and the brightness of its own stars to the mind. 

 Her voice in winter may be sometimes hoarse, and her face wrinkled and frown- 

 ing ; but her children will not love her the less for a sternness of discipline by 

 which she trains them up in habits of unremitting labor and self-dependence, 

 and thus qualifies them to be blessings and ornaments of their own community, 

 the substantial pillars of the federal edifice, and the pioneers of learning, civili- 

 zation, humanity and religion in the boundless West." And first, of the 



ESSEX COUNTY SOCIETY. 



Whose Report is said to be the " most complete," that Society having from its 

 long experience in publishing annually a volume of its transactions, attained a 

 high rank in the fullness of its Reports and the exactness of its statements. 



Plowing avith Double Teams. — At the Cattle-Show, Sept. 24, 1845, there 

 were thirteen competitors, and the quarter of an acre assigned to each was to 

 he plowed not less than seven inches deep, and was done in from thirty-five to 

 forty minutes. Notwithstanding, say the Committee of Judges, (who in Massa- 

 chusetts are themselves many of them habituated to the use of the plow,) these 

 trials have been so often repeated, (more than twenty years,) they are still re- 

 ceived with increasing interest, and (listen, you of the stand-still school,) "every 

 succeeding year brings to notice some valuable improvement.'" Now how, but 

 by bein? printed, and thus taking the furm of that " book knowledge " so much 



