MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 37 



MIDDLESEX AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The following account of the exhibition of the Agricultural 

 Society in this county is given by its Secretary, Moses Prich- 

 ard, of Concord. 



The Society of Middlesex Husbandmen and Manufacturers, 

 held their fifty-second Annual Festival at Concord, October 1st, 

 1845. 



Cattle Show, as it is generally called, is, throughout the coun- 

 ty, if not throughout the State, the farmers' holiday, and to be 

 present on that occasion, and to bring to its exhibition some arti- 

 cle or product, is a matter of calculation and enterprise with 

 them for weeks and months beforehand. From almost every 

 town and neighborhood they come to this fair, bringing the 

 rarest and choicest of their fruits and vegetables, their nicest 

 butter and their noblest cattle, and spend this one day, at least, 

 in comparing the results of their own and other's labors, and 

 in receiving and imparting information and knowledge on the 

 many topics so interesting and useful to them. 



The practical results of such an incentive, and the benefits 

 of the information thus sown broad-cast through the county, 

 are too immense to be numbered or known. They may be 

 seen, however, by the most careless observer, in the improved 

 appearance of the farms, and the more comfortable appearance 

 of the families that line every road-side. Farmers, unlike the 

 members of any other profession or calling, can meet on their 

 own ground and devote it to their own purposes. 



The morning of the day of jur cattle show, this year, was 

 very unpropitious, a violent rain preventing hundreds from at- 

 tending ; and thus not only reducing the number of articles for 

 exhibition, but detracting very much from the interest and use- 

 fulness of the festival, by the absence of some of the ablest and 

 oldest members of the Society. 



Notwithstanding the rain, however, a large number were 



