ESSEX AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 17 



In this enumeration I have given only a part of the intel- 

 lectual labor which has been bestowed for the honor of this 

 society and for instruction in the art of agriculture. Page 

 after page of our Transactions is filled with short reports of 

 committees, concise statements upon crops and cattle and 

 manures, and processes of cultivation, and grass, and fruit- 

 trees, containing hints and facts by which the farmer may be 

 guided in his business. But not only for the information which 

 it contains is this long record of fifty years of agricultural 

 thought valuable and interesting, but for its significance as the 

 product of an intelligent, inquiring and educated community. A 

 prize animal in the stall, premium crops on the acres, indicate a 

 skilful devotion to agriculture which all practical men respect. 

 A thoughtful essay upon this animal or crop indicates an intel- 

 lectual ambition which we all admire. It tells of schools and 

 books, and studious hours, and diffusion of knowledge, and 

 social respectability, and civil elevation, and all the moral ad- 

 vancement which attend upon popular freedom and the institu- 

 tions of an enlightened people. It tells of prosperous and 

 progressive agriculture. 



Of the practical operations of this society, of the premiums 

 it has awarded, the plans of improvement it has designed, there 

 is a long and honorable record, which I should be glad to lay 

 before you in all its details ; but I must content myself with 

 some of its most prominent features. 



The encouragement of well-managed farms was one of the 

 early objects of the society ; and I am sorry to say it is an object 

 which has met with indifferent support from our farmers. For 

 many successive years there have been no entries in this class, 

 and a vast amount of information has been lost from the un- 

 willingness of farmers to submit their operations to the inspec- 

 tion of committees of the society. I trust, as our ambition 

 increases and our agriculture improves, this reluctance will be 

 wholly removed. 



The farms which are recorded as having received the first 

 premium are those of Jesse Putnam, of Danvers, in 1824 ; 

 Moses Newell, of Newl)ury, in 1826 ; Jacob Osgood, of Andover, 

 in 1829 ; Erastus Ware, (the Pickman farm,) of Salem, in 1830 ; 

 Matthew Hooper, of Danvers, in 1881 ; Thomas Chase, of West 

 Newbury, in 1832 ; Daniel Putnam, of Danvers, in 1835 ; Jo- 

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