sibly I miglit recall to yoiar minds, not unpleasantly, and not 

 unprofitably, many an amusing, and many an instructive pas- 

 sage, over -which you have laughed, or over which you have 

 pondered in days gone by. 



These pleasant and useful contributions will be found to 

 vary in tone and style not only with the subjects they discuss, 

 but with the particular tastes and temperaments of their au- 

 thors. You have in them all sorts of writing ; now it is 

 calm, solid, exact, instructive — now lively, and comic, it 

 may be — sometimes, perhaps, it would rank as florid — while, 

 occasionally, the thing is rather over-done, and would have 

 been excluded by the critical Tony Veller — as " werging on 

 the poetical." 



Of the serio-comic style, I doubt if English literature, or 

 any other literature, affords finer examples than Mr. Fitch 

 Poole's Eeports upon Swine and Poultry, and his inimitable 

 account of the convention of domestic fowls, held in this 

 city of Lawrence in the year 1852. 



I think it would be well (and I respectfully suggest it to 

 the editor of the annual pamphlet) to publish a catalogue of 

 these contributions, with the ^'■ears of their appearance, and 

 the names of their authors. While it would recall attention 

 to them, it would be a measure of great convenience and 

 utility. At present, it is an affair of no small difficulty to 

 find any particular article in the Transactions — partly from 

 the want of a continuous paging, — but still more from the 

 fact, that there is no general index. 



A sentence or two in regard to what may be called the 

 statistical portion of these volumes ; — their word and figure 

 statements of crops and of animals raised — of butter and of 

 cheese made — of meadows reclaimed — of orchards and forests 

 planted ; — every thing, in fact, that belongs to agricultural 

 operations and results. I have no reason to doubt that these 

 reports of the Essex farmers compare favorably enough with 

 similar reports made in other counties and in other States. 

 But I have not been able to regard them as coming any 



