28 



ON FARMS. 



labor can be profitably applied ; an error obviously incompatible 

 witb intelligent, productive and improving husbandry. 



Your Committee, anxious to encourage applications for these 

 premiums, deeming the actual exhibition of the management of 

 particular farms one of the best modes of promoting agricultural 

 improvement, have by a majority thought proper to award to 

 Mr. Barker the seventh premium and accordingly recommend 

 this result to the society ; and they beg to state that they are 

 strongly induced to this by the above consideration and the good 

 condition of his working stock. 



Your Committee have great pleasure in stating that at the 

 hospitable invitation of Dr. Joseph Kittredge of Andover, one of 

 their own body, they had the satisfaction of going over his 

 grounds ; and without asking his consent, they unite in their 

 commendation of his husbandry ; the neat and improved condi- 

 tion of his trees, fields, general cultivation and live stock ; and in 

 thanking him for the essential aid he renders to agricultural 

 improvement by such an example. 



Your Committee in closing their report unite in the conviction 

 that the agriculture of the county is in a course of gradual 

 improvement. They regret the small number of applications 

 for the liberal premiums of the Society on the management of 

 Farms ; in the firm persuasion, as before stated, that no class 

 of premiums is better adapted to promote the objects of the 

 Society ; that there is no means of agricultural improvement 

 more efficient than that of bringing the details of individual 

 husbandry directly before the individual himself and the agricul- 

 tural public ; and placing the management of different farms in 

 direct comparison with each other. It is a false and pernicious 

 diffidence, which, on the part of many individuals, prevents an 

 application for these premiums ; and which, to the regret of 

 the Committee, withholds, in their opinion, many of the best 

 managed farms in the county from observation. 



Your Committee beg leave to press strongly upon the atten- 

 tion of their brother farmers, what still appear to be the prominent 

 defects and faults of their husbandry ; the little exactness ob- 

 served in their operations ; the gross neglect of farming accounts 



