36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tools in, and the objection he makes to getting an ox wagon or 

 cart or a horse wagon over four or five feet of manure in order 

 to get it stored, is certainly worthy of consideration, by those of 

 us who would have to get wagons and carts in there and out 

 again without boots prepared for that purpose. 



Why this plan of a barn has ever been decided upon so uni- 

 versally, it will be somewhat difficult to determine. This plan 

 which Mr. Hyde has presented here is a plan which has been 

 adopted in New England for a great many years. I see gentle- 

 men in this room who know well the old-fashioned form of 

 barn, as it was understood in Essex County, and which was the 

 antecedent of the very barn which Mr. Hyde has alluded to this 

 afternoon on my farm. The old barn was shaped very much 

 as this is, but instead of driving lengthwise through it, there 

 were two passages on the side of the barn, driving across it, and 

 the great mass of the hay was between these two passages. The 

 cattle were tied at each end of the barn, facing toward these 

 passage-ways. The difficulty with that barn was manifest. In 

 the first place, all above the floors to the ridgepole was waste 

 room, unless you put in shifting platforms. In the second 

 place, it was not so easy to pitch the hay into that bay, as the 

 hay rose to the very top of it. It was not so easy a thing to be 

 done by our ancestors that we, who are somewhat more feeble, 

 should be willing to follow them, unless they handed down, 

 with their barns, their shoulders and backs, which we do not 

 find that they often did. They built some improved barns, and 

 they drove lengthwise through them. Then what did they 

 arrive at ? At just what Mr. Hyde has here, — an admirable 

 place for the tying of cattle, and room to store hay over the cat- 

 tle and in the bays opposite. They saved all that room. They 

 got at one point. The object of the barn here in New England 

 is to store as much hay and fodder as possible, and as near to 

 the cattle as possible. Labor is worth more tlian anything else, 

 and the transportation of roots or hay to any distance, either by 

 barrows or a railroad arranged in the barn, is a matter of incon- 

 venience and takes time, and this work was to be done as quick 

 as possible. The object, therefore, was, to make room for as 

 many cattle as possible, and to store food enough to keep them 

 through the winter. 



This plan which has been adopted is undoubtedly, take it all 



