14 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Island, and the towns in Connecticut bordering on the Sound, 

 and apparently tired of a monotonous level country, went to the 

 other extreme and settled first on the hills. A son of a Cape 

 Cod farmer emigrating to Mt. Ephraim, as Berkshire was then 

 called, was told by his father to pitch his tent on a hill and near 

 some brook. The son did as he was ordered, and selected his 

 home on one of our mountains, where he had a good look-out 

 and plenty of water, but the location was too solitary for man's 

 social nature, and a stone chimney and a few red-rose bushes 

 mark the spot, where once stood a human habitation. We find 

 many such old landmarks scattered among our hills, and it has 

 become a question of some interest, what is to be the future of 

 our hill towns. Is Mt. Ephraim to become Mt. Desolation ? 

 We believe not. Already there is a dawn of better times. Those 

 who dwell in cities, and buy and sell and get gain, have found 

 on our hills just the contrast they need with their city life, and 

 our farmers are fitting up their homes, and entertaining their 

 city cousins with bread and milk, and the songs of the whip- 

 poor-will and nightingale to the tune of ten to fifteen dollars 

 per week. 



Our mountain towns also abound with springs, brooks and 

 lakes, and are just the place where fish can be bred with great 

 success. No other county in the State furnishes such facilities 

 for fish-breedhig as Berkshire, and we expect our learned associ- 

 ate will this week teach us how the thing is done. We have 

 already made a beginning, and on one of the hill towns east of 

 us, a farmer has made a reservoir covering some fifty acres, 

 where he has trout weighing two to three pounds, which any 

 one may catch, provided he will pay sixty cents per pound for 

 the privilege of fishing. The time may come when trout may 

 be one of the staple articles of export from the county, and an 

 extra train may be required to carry our fish to New York, as 

 is now necessary to transport our milk. " Ichabod " cannot be 

 written on our mountain towns, if ichthyology can restore them 

 to their former glory. 



It is a great mistake to suppose that improved and large breeds 

 of cattle cannot thrive on our mountain pastures. The Roan 

 Duke made the Middlefield cattle famous throughout the State, 

 and when he had served his day and generation in that town, 

 he was transferred to the hills of Shelburne, where he did equally 



