AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 231 



I can find, I think, in the vicinity of Worcester, fence that 

 has stood for several years, — ever since the introduction of 

 the wire, — and it is apparently as good as it ever was. 



Mr. . I have had to straighten up my wires every 



second year since they were put up. The posts are twenty- 

 five feet apart, which is too far. There is a dift'erence in the 

 two wires between the same two posts ; when one wire will 

 be straight, another wire will sag six or eight inches out of 

 line. 



Mr. Hersey What kind of wire is it? 



Mr. . It is round, galvanized wire, twisted. It 



was put up eight years ago last spring. 



Mr. Smith. Twenty-five feet is too great a distance to 

 set the posts apart, for a permanent fen(;e. The gentleman 

 made a mistake in leaving out an intermediate post. 



Mr. Hillman. The wires that I put on the trees are just 

 as tight as they ever were. 



Adjourned to evening. 



Evening Session. 



The meeting was called to order at seven and a half 

 o'clock, Mr. J. B. Moore of Concord in the chair. 



The Chairman. The lecture this evening will be upon 

 agricultural machinery and implements. It gives me great 

 pleasure to introduce to you one of the members of the State 

 Board of Agriculture from its first foundation, the accom- 

 plished gentleman and friend of the farmer, Hon. James S. 

 Grinnell of Greenfield. 



AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY AND IMPLEMENTS. 



BY HON. JAMES S. GRINNELL OF GREENFIELD. 



The use of agricultural implements, coeval with the enforced 

 cultivation of the soil by Divine command, — in sorrow, in 

 the sweat of the face, and with thorns and thistles, — begins 

 with the earliest date of recorded history ; but thousands of 

 years went 1)y, aud generation after generation, past number- 

 ing, returned to the earth from whence they came, and which 

 they had painfully tilled, with but small improvement in 

 the means by which they wrought out their daily living. 



