222 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Evening Session. 



The meeting was called to order at seven and a half o'clock, 

 by Captain Miles, the large hall being completely filled. 



THE STRUCTURE AND GROWTH OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



BY PROFESSOK LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: — In the lecture. which I delivered 

 last year, at Barre, I began some remarks upon the growth 

 of our domesticated animals. It is intended that I should 

 this evening continue the same topic. It covers so wide a 

 range of information, that to give even a brief sketch of the 

 whole subject in an evening's address would be impossible, 

 and I hope you will pardon me, therefore, if I dwell more 

 fully upon one part of the matter in hand, and repeat only as 

 much of what I have already stated as may be necessary for 

 an understanding of the facts to be illustrated, closing with 

 a rapid outline of such aspects of the question as may come 

 up for fuller treatment on another occasion. 



I wish I could lay before 3'ou finished results, such as were 

 presented to us this afternoon upon the motions of the sap in 

 the plant. Unfortunately, in the field upon which I intend to 

 enter now, I am only a pioneer, and a pioneer upon a ground 

 which has hardly been touched. A vast amount of informa- 

 tion has been collected concerning the growth of animals, but 

 about those most interesting to man, and about man himself, 

 we know least ; so that the presentation of the subject, as it 

 is introduced in our text-books and books of natural history, 

 is largely borrowed from investigations upon other animals. 

 The fact is, that with reference to the embryology of our do- 

 mesticated animals, we are doing now what physicians were 

 obliged to do with reference to disease centuries ago, when 

 dissections of the human body were looked upon as something 

 fearful, not to be thought of. All the information which the 

 surgeon could then bring to his aid in the treatment of his 

 patient was derived from the observation of animals. It is 

 only a few hundred years since the frame of man began to be 

 the subject of careful investigation, and our knoAvledge is still 



