16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Nothing but the prompt and persistent action of the Board 

 enabled the State to arrest and stop that fatal scourge. The 

 aggregate cost to the State was less than seventy thousand dol- 

 lars, but had it not been for the united and persistent action of 

 the Board it probably would, here as in Europe, have devastated 

 not only our own but other States, at a loss of hundreds oi 

 thousands, if not millions, of dollars. And who that is cogni- 

 zant of these facts can doubt their far-sighted policy, and that 

 this action of the Board with reference to that disease was worth 

 more to the State and the country than many times the cost of 

 our department from the beginning, or the expenses of running 

 it for fifty years to come ? Facts fully substantiate these state- 

 ments, but what was of far more serious consideration is the 

 fact that the use of these diseased animals and their dairy prod- 

 ucts was daily sapping the foundations of human life. 



If any one thinks these statements exaggerated, let him reflect 

 on the fact, that the loss of cattle in Great Britain from pleuro- 

 pneumonia was estimated at one time at ten millions of dol- 

 lars annually, resulting principally from a want of knowledge 

 and vigilance in arresting it at its commencement, as was done 

 in Massachusetts. All subsequent information justifies what 

 has been stated in regard to this matter, when much less was 

 known than at the present time.* 



Here also, by a resolution, was instituted the primary pro- 

 ceedings which convened the National Convention of Farmers at 

 Washington in 1851, and which resulted in the formation of 

 the United States Agricultural Society, an association which for 

 ten years, and until the late civil conflict, exercised a most 

 happy influence, not only on the cause of agriculture, but in 

 the promotion of friendly intercourse between the leading culti- 

 vators of the several States. 



Here, too, in the councils of this Board, originated the pro- 

 posal for establishing the New England Agricultural Society, 

 now so successfully exercising its functions throughout New 

 England, under the lead of one of our own members as Presi- 

 dent from the day of its formation to the present time. 



The discussion of subjects of general utility not strictly agri- 

 cultural have frequently attracted the action of the Board, as in 



* See Mr. Flint's Letter to Gov. Andrew, in the Report of 1863, p. 14-25, and in the 

 Reports, '59, '60, '61, '62. 



