ADVERTISEMENT. 



The Massachusetts Society for promoting Agriculture, the first association 

 of the kind in the Commonwealth or in America, was founded in the year 

 1792, and incorporated by an Act of the General Court of that year. 



Obtaining means of operation by an annual assessment upon its members, 

 and by a subscription amounting to four thousand dollars, a liberal sum for that 

 period, it proceeded to invite public attention to its objects, to distribute pre- 

 miums for agricultural improvements, and to import valuable animals with a 

 view to the introduction of better breeds of cattle and other stock. In 1797, 

 it instituted the Agricultural Journal, a publication continued more than thirty 

 years. It took measures for the institution of County Societies, and for the 

 erection of a hall, at Brighton, in Middlesex, for the exhibition of domestic 

 and other manufactures. It contributed to the establishment of the Professor- 

 ship of Natural History, and of the Botanical Garden, in the University of 

 Cambridge. In 1818, began a series of public addresses, pronounced succes- 

 sively at its autumnal celebrations, by John Lowell, Josiah Quincy, Richard 

 Sullivan, Henry Colman, Timothy Pickering, John C. Gray, James Richard- 

 son, Edward Everett, Henry A. S. Dearborn, and perhaps others. The 

 delivery and publication of addresses from such sources exerted an important 

 influence in attracting attention and favor to the objects of the association. 



The example was followed by other institutions for the same purpose. The 

 Commonwealth extended to them its patronage ; and the policy has been con- 

 tinued, and has grown in favor, to the present time. An Act of 1819 (chapter 

 114) appropriated two hundred dollars annually, from the Commonwealth's 

 treasury, to every Society which should raise the sum of one thousand dollars 

 for the promotion of agriculture, and in like proportion for any greater sum, 

 not exceeding three thousand dollars. The following Table exhibits a list of 

 the Agricultural Societies now in existence, with the dates of their incorpora- 

 tion respectively, the dates of their first grant of money, and the aggregate 

 amounts received from the Commonwealth. 



