20 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



THE IJSrTERESTS OF AGRICULTURE. 



From an Address before the Middlesex North Agricultural Society 



BY JOHN A. GOODWIN. 



We have higher motives than ever for striving to elevate our 

 various callings, and to render our New England homes more 

 prosperous and attractive. What can be done to advance the 

 interests of agriculture in particular, that being the base of the 

 industrial column — the foundation art, from "whose wants and 

 desires all other pursuits and professions spring ? 



In selecting a topic from so wide a field I can hardly hope to 

 choose that which may seem to all the most desirable. For 

 instance : — a friend I see here from Billerica, may think that I 

 ought to hold him up to censure, and prove tliat he deserves no 

 premiums from the Society's funds, because he tolerated so 

 many scores of caterpillars' nests this year on his apple-trees 

 and worthless wild cherry-trees along his wall, that his orchard 

 looked as if a fire had passed over it, and vermin enough had 

 been produced for the destruction of all the orchards in his 

 neighborhood, next year. He is right — he, and all like him, 

 ought to be cut off for a year from premiums and good- standing 

 here, but I must leave him to the gnawings of the caterpillar of 

 conscience. 



Another friend, from Dracut, may think that I am about to 

 argue against his right to even a gratuity on his fine articles 

 exhibited, because he allows a plantation of thistles to fringe 

 the highway all along his land, where I saw them scattering 

 their seed for next year's crop, by the thousand over his farm, 

 and by the ten thousand over the farms of his neighbors. Now 

 this friend, too, is right in supposing that he and all who are 

 guilty of the like offence ought to be held up, on occasions like 

 this, as very bad examples, but I must dismiss them with the 



