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ral products. The same year 1801 brought forth a suggestion before 

 the Massachusetts Society for the permanent endowment and support 

 of a professorship of Natural History, and a Botanic Garden at 

 Cambridge, which were in fact established in 1804, whilst before 

 1804 the Massachusetts Society had commenced the award of premi- 

 ums for agricultural products, and had entered upon that generous 

 and patriotic career of encouragement to our farmers which has done 

 so much for the agriculture of New England, and the improvement 

 of its stock. 



It was in 1807 that a new era in the progress of agricultural edu- 

 cation dawned in New England, which at first little noticed, was 

 destined to mark an eventful change, and to hasten the progress 

 to an agricultural development. Up to this time so far as can be 

 learned, no agricultural society had thought of a " cattle show " with 

 premiums to be awarded in public, but the societies had confined 

 themselves to printed publications, and to awards for essays and field 

 crops, and for the importation of the best sheep. In the autumn of 

 1807 Mr. Elkanah Watson, a native of Plymouth and a direct descend- 

 ant of Gov. Win slow who in 1624 had brought the three heifers and 

 the bull to Plymouth, procured the first pair of merino sheep which 

 had been introduced into Berkshire, and perhaps the whole Common- 

 wealth. Col. Humphreys of Connecticut, then late minister to Spain, 

 had imported 75 ewes and 27 rams in 1802, and one Seth Adams had 

 the same year claimed of the Massachusetts society a premium for 

 two merino sheep imported from France. But the records of the 

 society do not show that any premium was awarded Mr. Adams, aor 

 indeed that they were ever in the state. 



Mr. Watson gave notice of an exhibition of his two sheep on the 

 public square in Pittsfield. He wrote that " many farmers and even 

 females were attracted to this first novel and humble exhibition. 

 From this lucky incident I reasoned thus : If two animals are capable 

 of exciting so much attention, what would be the effect of a display 

 on a large scale of different animals ? The farmers present responded 

 to my remarks with approbation. We thus became acquainted, and 

 from that moment to the present have agricultural fairs and cattle 

 shows, with all their connections, predominated in my mind." On the 

 1st of August, 1810 an appeal drawn by Mr. Watson and signed by 

 26 persons appointed an exhibition of stock on the 1st of October. 

 This effort was successful, and resulted in a charter of the Berkshire 

 Agricultural Society the ensuing winter of 1811. In the September 



