ADDRESS. 



The value of an Institution must be estimated by the inter- 

 est it is designed to promote and its adaptation to promote such 

 interest. Brought to this test, few, whose more direct bearings 

 are on worldly ,concerns, have a higher claim to general support 

 than the one I now have the privilege to address. 



Your object, gentlemen, is to enable men more abundantly 

 and with diminished labor to supply themselves with the neces- 

 sities and elegances of life and in this way to render their condi- 

 tion more comfortable. 



Surely this is a great and worthy enterprise. A man may live 

 and endure hfe, and, if called in providence, be submissive too, in 

 caves or holes of the rocks, or ill-sheltered in the wigwam of the 

 untaught savage, on a morsel of bread, the scanty earnings of 

 ill-directed labour. Still it is an object of deep interest to be 

 better provided for and to obtain this better provision with dimin- 

 ished labor. 



As the object of this Society is important, so I think it may 

 easily be shown that it is well calculated to produce the result 

 for which it is organized. 



To accomplish this result, it is indispensable in the first place 

 that the community generally be made acquainted with the abun- 

 dant and varied provision which a bountiful Providence has made 

 for us. Such knowledge is indispensable to a judicious selection of 

 the most profitable or useful. On this subject there is a want of 

 information, not generally supposed, and not easily accounted for. 

 In the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, there are varieties 

 recommended by the profit or pleasure they are capable of af- 

 fording, abounding in different parts of the world, — I might say 

 of the state and county, — of which large communities remain unac- 

 quainted. In consequence of which, an article of comparatively 



