26 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



logicfil result — that no improvement conkl be reached with- 

 out iuvestigation — had no terrors for him. He seldom read. 

 The loritten word he received with distrust. It might contain 

 principles, and it wasn't principles that he cared anything 

 about, hnt practice. No matter whether founded on w'isdom 

 and experience or not, practice was the thing. It seemed to 

 be his opinion that farming could not be improved though it 

 might be injured by books. Its processes were so peculiar 

 that they could be gained only by tradition. 



It is probable that the events and the excitements of the 

 Revolution itself, with the travel, the observation, and the 

 social intercourse which it involved, had much to do with 

 breaking up the impregnable barrier of prejudice and slavery 

 to custom and precedent which ruled so strongly in the popular 

 mind. Great passions which reach and stir up the lowest 

 depths of the nation's heart have a liberalizing and progres- 

 sive influence. They excite thought and awaken a spirit 

 of inquiry. But that the picture is not in the least over- 

 drawn is evident from the fact that here and there are a few 

 specimens left to remind us that the leaven which the early 

 societies infused among the people has not yet permeated the 

 entire mass. 



PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS. 



'But time brino;s its chano;es. Somethin2' more was felt to 

 be needed, and a convention was held in Georgetown, in the 

 District of Columbia, on the 28th of November, 1809, from 

 which grew the Columbian Agricultural Society for the Pro- 

 motion of Rural and Domestic Economy ; and the first 

 exhibition, probably, iu this country, was held by that 

 society on the 10th of May, 1810, with the ofter of liberal 

 premiums for the encouragement of sheep-raising, &c. El- 

 kanah Watson exhibited three merino sheep in Pittsfield, 

 Massachusetts, in the October following of the same year. 

 It was an innovation upon old custom, and the occasion of 

 much ridicule and contempt among the farmers of that day 

 and generation, but it was the germ of the Berkshire County 

 Agricultural Society, whose regular exhibitions began the 

 year following, and are believed to have been the first county 

 exhibitions ever instituted in this country. 



