J. H. W. PAGE'S ADDRESS. 649 



of science as were the best professors of that day. So will it 

 ever be ; the supply will follow the demand. 



Filled, as the ranks of our farmers are, with active and in- 

 quiring minds, alive as they are to their own interest, and fa- 

 vorably situated as I have shown them to be for intellectual 

 investigation and development, no agricultural people were 

 ever better prepared than our own for carrying forward the 

 march of reform and improvement. "With an agricultural 

 population so prepared for investigation and inquiry, it is a 

 subject of congratulation that our State government, which 

 has heretofore done partial justice to the great agricultural 

 interest by its encouragement of agricultural societies, has, 

 somewhat tardily, yet as one of the first of the States, estab- 

 lished a Board of Agriculture. That Board, rightly conducted, 

 cannot fail of being the means of concentrating the practical 

 and scientific knowledge diffused over the Commonwealth, 

 and carrying forward the great cause of agricultural education 

 in its broadest sense. If the farmers so will, it will be the 

 means of popularizing science and wedding it to practice, a 

 union from which the happiest fruits may be expected. 



The anniversaries of our agricultural societies are emphati- 

 cally the popular festivals of Massachusetts. Thanksgiving, 

 handed down to us by the fathers, is the cherished, and, I trust, 

 the ever-to-be cherished family festival ; but the agricultural 

 show is the great general festival, in which all men who live 

 by bread may and do join, forgetting all political names and 

 party distinctions, and coming together as a band of brethren, 

 to thank the great common Father for his manifold blessings. 



I congratulate you, gentlemen of the Plymouth County Ag- 

 ricultural Society, upon the rank which your society holds in 

 the fraternity of agricultural associations. I congratulate you 

 upon the happy auspices under which you meet. Remember 

 that the course of the cause which you are engaged in is on- 

 ward and upward ; and may success crown your endeavors. 

 Remember that the farmer's motto should always be, 7iot "for- 

 getting the things that are behind, press forward to the things 

 that are before," and " prove all things ; hold fast that which 

 is good." 



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