18 THE HISTORY OF THE 



Instruments rose to heights of enthusiasm in their Report 

 in 1834. 



The plough, for which more than a hundred patents 

 have been obtained since the promulgation of that glori- 

 ous document, the Declaration of Independence, has by 

 late improvements arrived to such perfection, that could 

 our oxen like Balaam's ass be endowed with the power 

 of speech, they would shout "Howard forever," or in the 

 more quaint language of late political times, "Huzza for 

 Howard, the man who has relieved our necks of half 

 their burden and aided the Harrow in its duties." 



Speaking at Danvers, in September, 1835, Daniel P. 

 King of Danvers extolled the Agricultural Societies as 

 potent factors in securing new prosperity for the farmer, 

 greater hay crops, finer results in the dairy, the rich fruit 

 of better methods. But a year afterward, the orator of 

 the day, Nathan W. Hazen, sounded a note of despond- 

 ency and alarm. Beef and pork, packed in Ohio, he as- 

 serted were being freighted in teams through the Notch 

 of the White Mountains to the fertile intervales in the 

 Connecticut River. A few years before Worcester County 

 was producing 2,000,000 pounds of pork a year, now it 

 was buying the western product. Farms were never more 

 difficult to sell. Both speakers may have taken extreme 

 views, we may believe, but in one particular the Essex 

 County men were suffering great disappointment in this 

 decade, through the failure of their golden dreams of 

 wealth from the new industry of silk culture. 



Silk Culture. 



In his Statement in the Transactions of the year 1838, 

 Rev. Gardner B. Perry, of Bradford, an enthusiastic ex- 

 ponent of the new industry, stated that the pioneer in 

 this experiment in Essex County was Enoch Boynton of 

 Byfield, who planted some mulberry cuttings in 1822. 

 His nursery was enlarged by trees raised from seed, 

 graftings and cuttings, to more than 42,000 in 1832. He 



