22 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



hardly surpassed in any other region of the Old World or the 

 New. 



And while this narrow spot marked out for iis as Essex 

 County has grown in years, how has she increased in wealth 

 and population, and in all the memories and deeds which make 

 a people great ! We contemplate her growth with pride, from 

 the day when fifty years ago Timothy Pickering called a few 

 enterprising farmers about him to consult upon what was then 

 the great business of our people, down to this hour, when her 

 teeming and busy population hardly find rest from their inces- 

 sant toil. Within the lifetime of this society, Lawrence and 

 Lynn, and Newburyport and Salem have sprung into existence 

 as cities ; Haverhill, and Gloucester, and Marblehead, and Ames- 

 bury, and Peabody, and Danvers, and Andover and Georgetown 

 have become large towns — some of them have been born. The 

 products of our industry have reached the fabulous sum of 

 nearly eiglity-two million dollars annually ! Schools have 

 multiplied in greater ratio than the increase of population ; 

 libraries and institutions of learning and religion have grown 

 up on every hand. The early benefactions which made the 

 name of Phillips and Bartlett illustrious among us have been 

 eclipsed by the larger bounties which Peabody and Heard have 

 bestowed on their native county. And while the founders of 

 this society could look back over a refulgent history of states- 

 manship and scholarship and patriotic valor, — recalling the 

 memory of their own sons who fell in the early days of the 

 revolution ; the gallant deeds performed by the men of Essex 

 on land and sea in the subsequent war ; the courage and wis- 

 dom of their own Pickering, the friend of Washington, the 

 incorruptible Roman of the young republic ; the comprehensive 

 power of Parsons, the statesman and jurist ; the sagacious mer- 

 chants who at that time had explored unknown seas, and given 

 the ports of Essex County a name throughout the world, — what 

 an abounding treasure of greatness has accumulated for us of 

 this later day ! Li letters and law and public service we point 

 now to Prescott, and Hawthorne, and Whittier, and Story, and 

 Gushing, and Rantoul, born and nurtured on our own soil. 

 The part, too, which Essex County performed in the patriotic 

 services of our first heroic period has not been forgotten by her 

 sons of our day. The lesson taught by Pickering at North 



