131 



cavated roadway there is ftir less waste, while the digging 

 that is necessarily all spade and pick work in individual 

 holes, here is mostly done by the plough. If in handling 

 blasted rocks I find some with good building faces, these I 

 haul into soiiie waste angle, to avail myself of their possi- 

 bilities. This, my fellow formers, is the best paying way I 

 have yet found for disposing of these obdurate tenants-at- 

 will, whose principal business, since the coming of civiliza- 

 tion, has been to break, or wear away plough points and 

 strain the patience of industry. The other day I studied the 

 record of a single stone measuring two feet by two and a 

 half. On its hard greenstone face, located just below the 

 surface of the soil, I counted, side by side, as close as they 

 could stand, over forty well-defined grooves made by the 

 points of ploughs, all along down from the ancient Puritan 

 days, to the present year of possession. With feelings some- 

 what allied to indignation, I pitched that stone into the 

 bottom of my roadway trench, and so closed the record. 



ESSAYS AND REPORTS OF COMMITTEES. 



The Committee on Essays and Farm Accounts would re- 

 port that but one essay was ofiered for premium, and no 

 statement of " actual fiirm accounts." As the authorship of 

 the essay was (without thought evidently), made known to 

 the Committee, they felt that they could not deliberately 

 transcend the rules of the Society by considering a premium 

 in connection with it, though, with the author's consent, the 

 essay is published. For the best report, they award the first 

 premium, of $10, to D. W. Low, of Gloucester, for the re- 

 port on Pears. There are other valuable reports, like that 

 on Manures, for instance ; but as the chief value lies in the 

 statements which accompany experiments that are the subject 

 of distinct premium, the Committee did not feel that they 

 could, in such cases, grant additional premiums. 



N. A. Horton, D. E. Safford, C. P. Preston — Committee. 



