VEGETABLES. 427 



WORCESTER NORTH. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



Your committee have not thought it their duty, or the Lest 

 method of promoting the objects of this society, to encourage 

 by their premiums the growth of merely mammoth specimens, 

 especially since most vegetables of that description are really 

 less desirable and lesa valuable for use than well-grown speci- 

 mens of medium size and of a vigorous and natural growth. It 

 is well understood to be an easy matter to force the growth of 

 vegetables as well as of plants; and we have felt it our duty 

 to award the funds appropriated by the society for specimens 

 of fair and smooth exterior and solid character, grown in the 

 ordinary manner, and the results of judicious cultivation, rather 

 than for merely large specimens — nothing being known of the 

 manner of cultivation or of the quantity and quality of the 

 whole crop compared with the expense of raising it. 



Among other things deserving special remark, your commit- 

 .tee believe the exhibition of potatoes and squashes — which are, 

 perhaps, the most important of the products of the garden — to 

 be remarkably good, whether we consider the variety or the 

 quality of the specimens. We have rarely seen potatoes of 

 better appearance — and this, too, notwithstanding the peculiar- 

 ly unfavorable nature of the season for their production and 

 growth. 



Moses G-. Lyon, Chairman. 



HAMPDEN. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



There is perhaps no department of agriculture that better 

 remunerates the tiller of the soil than the culture and growth 

 of vegetables, especially in the vicinity of our large towns and 

 cities, where a greatly increased cultivation of them is of late 

 very visible. What farmer in our county, fifteen years since, 

 thought of giving the labor of one man, one day of each week, 

 to raise " garden sauce " for market ? The pioneer who led in 



