60 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



in the progress of all departments of agricultural knowledge, 

 and have grown up to a harmonious system of national, state, 

 county and township organizations, all active, not only in 

 gathering and diffusing information, but furnishing a constant 

 stimulus to new effort and to higher triumphs of practical skill. 

 To the earnest spirit of inquiry which these societies 

 awakened in the community is due, in a great measure, the 

 growth and respectability of the agricultural literature of the 

 country. With the exception of four brief "Essays on 

 Field-Husbandry," by the Rev. Jared Eliot, of Connecticut, 

 the first of which is dated in 1747, I know of no agricul- 

 tural book, of any account, printed in the colonies previous 

 to the Revolution ; and all that followed that event for many 

 years consisted chiefly of the more or less valuable papers 

 submitted to the Massachusetts, the Philadelphia, and the 

 New York societies, till the "American Farmer" was started 

 in Baltimore in 1819. This is believed to have been the first 

 regular strictly agricultural journal published in the United 

 States. Others soon followed, however, till we have now 

 about a hundred periodicals devoted to the various ]>ranches 

 of farm economy, some of which are of a very high order of 

 merit. The aggregate regular circulation of these journals 

 cannot be less than three hundred thousand copies, and they 

 indicate a wide-spread desire for information which must 

 necessarily have an important influence on the future develop- 

 ment of this great interest. 



OUR AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 



The permanent agricultural literature of the countiy, now 

 so extensive and so creditable, has grown up, for the most 

 part, within the last twenty years. A few books of a high 

 character appeared, from time to time, forty or fifty years 

 ago, among them Coxe on Fruit-Trees ; Thacher's American 

 Orchardist ; Arator, by Colonel Taylor, of Virginia ; Fessen- 

 den's Complete Farmer, Buel's Farmer's Companion, etc. ; 

 but a large proportion of the farmer's reading, previous to 

 1850, consisted of English works, many of which were 

 reprinted in this country. Since that date American treatises, 

 in the highest degree instructive and useful, have appeared, 

 and we have works upon landscape-gardening, fruits, animals, 



