MASS. BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 409 



flict with each other. Several of these meetings come on 

 the same day. It would be well that there should be an 

 undertanding that they should come one after the other, so 

 that individuals could go into other counties and see what 

 was done there ; that they could, by their practical observa- 

 tions, carry home that which they might find valuable. In 

 this way the objects of the premiums would be suggested to 

 them, and the manner of offering them. In this way there 

 might be very great improvement in the discharge of the duties 

 of committees in reporting on the subject. 



I believe, it has been found by the gentleman who has pre- 

 pared the annual abstract which has been published by the 

 Legislature, that in different counties there is a very great vari- 

 ety of the degree of attention paid in preparing those reports. 

 In some counties it has been an object to make those reports 

 worthy of notice ; to make them the means of disseminating 

 useful knowledge. And when they are embodied together, a 

 useful book is furnished. If the State is to be at the expense 

 of publishing annually the reports of the several counties, it is 

 very desirable that the digest should be drawn up in such a 

 form as to be creditable to the State. Any gentleman who has 

 examined the reports of the state agricultural society in New 

 York, will find that it gives a fund of original information, — a 

 treasury of valuable knowledge every year. Constitute this 

 board, and Massachusetts, though far inferior to New York in 

 size and means, would still come into respectable comparison 

 with her as affording useful information on this subject. Until 

 the Legislature shall carry out the more general recommenda- 

 tion of the establishment of a board of agriculture, as one of 

 the departments of the State, it seems to me proper that the 

 agricultural societies, who are now the foster children of the 

 State, should be so far organized as to do this as well as they 

 can. 



E. K. Whittaker, of Needham, remarked : — The gentlemen 

 who have addressed the convention upon the resolution which 

 is now before it, have very properly explained what is the ob- 

 ject of this resolution. But they have not said what I think 

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