32 THE HISTORY OF THE 



enough desirable to make a business of supplying the 

 farms." 



The Essex County seedsmen were making great con- 

 tributions in these years to the man on the farm and to 

 the pages of the Transactions. In 1879 Mr. J. J. H. 

 Gregory exhibited 80 varieties of 17 different kinds of 

 vegetables, and 210 varieties of seed. His collection of 

 tomatoes was the largest and his method of culture, re- 

 ported in 1871, had been reprinted in the State Report 

 of the same year. Crosby's Early Sweet Corn and Stow- 

 ell's Evergreen, his favorite varieties, are still standards. 

 John S. Ives of Salem displayed 198 varieties of seed. 

 Aaron Low of Essex made fine exhibits. Experiments 

 with seedling potatoes were producing excellent results, 

 and the use of phosphates and other condensed fertilizers 

 had become general. 



1880—1890. 



The Address of Dr. James R. Nichols of Haverhill, in 

 1881, on the theme, "What Science Has Accomplished 

 for Farmers," was a gratifying complement to the learned 

 papers of his forerunner in the early days, Dr. Andrew 

 Nichols, whose papers on Scientific Agriculture were a 

 plea for and foretaste of the new agriculture which had 

 now become a fact. 



Dr. Nichols remarked that in his address to the Society 

 in 1855, he had predicted chemistry would come to the 

 relief of the farmer. Since that time vast stores of phos- 

 phoric rocks had been found in Russia, Spain and the 

 United States. The great phosphate beds near South 

 Carolina, which had been discovered in 1867, had yielded 

 in fertilizers shipped upwards of $2,000,000 in 1870. On 

 his own farm artificial fertilizers had largely supplanted 

 domestic manures. Speaking of strawberries and rasp- 

 berries, he said, "I do not remember to have seen culti- 

 vated varieties until long after reaching adult age. Now 

 of strawberries there are more than 350 varieties." 



