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REPORT OF THE SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE. 



The Supervisory Committee, in pursuance of their duties, vis- 

 ited some farms in the County during the past season, but owing 

 to the engagements of some of the members, were not able to 

 make as extensive observations as they otherwise might have done. 



The farm of Hon. Josiah Quincy, of Quincy, now in the occu- 

 pancy of his son, Hon. Josiah Quincy, Jr., consists of 500 acres, 

 about one-half of which is woodland. It came into the possession 

 of the first American ancestor of the family, Edmund Quincy, 

 direct from the Indians, in 1636. It comprises a portion of 

 what was the favorite corn-ground of the tribe from which the 

 name of our Commonwealth was derived, and what was the home 

 (so far as a savage can be said to have had a home) of Chicka- 

 tabot, the reigning chief of "the Massachusetts" at the time of 

 the first settlement of the English in the neighborhood. Here, 

 too, was the cemetery of the tribe, or, at least, one of the places 

 where they interred their dead. Their bones are not unfrequently 

 disturbed by the processes incident to the civilization which has 

 swept away these " native Americans," and left scarcely an out- 

 ward mark of their existence. 



The Committee had the pleasure of an interview with the ven- 

 erable proprietor of this farm, who, at the age of nearly ninety 

 years, retains a good degree of the interest he has always felt in 

 agricultural improvement. He informed us that the dwelling in 

 which he resides, was built by his grandfather in 1760 ; that he 

 began agricultural operations here in 1797. The long and beau- 

 tiful avenue of trees leading from the highway to the house, which 

 attracts the attention of every passer-by, was planted by him. 

 He built the principal barn on the farm in 1808. For many years 

 it was regarded as the best in the State, and is yet well worthy of 

 examination, both on account of the convenience of the original 

 plan, and the extensive accommodations it aifords through ad- 

 ditions which have been made. It will hold two hundred tons of 

 hay and shelter 100 cattle. Mr. Q. early turned his attention to 

 the keeping of live stock on the soiling system, and in 1814 

 adopted it for all the stock kept on the farm. Many of the re- 

 sults of his great experience on this subject are embodied in an 

 essay which he kindly furnished for the Transactions of this So- 

 ciety for 1852, and in a previous essay published in the Journal 

 of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture for 1820 ; 

 both of which, with other observations, are comprised in a work 

 prepared by him in 1859, entitled " Essays on the Soiling of 

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