48 MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 



scenery adjacent to a farmer's residence. Some one has said, 

 that every one who plants a clump of trees adds a beauty-spot 

 to the face of Nature. We hope that our successors, at no dis- 

 tant day, may have the privilege of recording the names of 

 many, who will have shown their grateful aflfection, by adding 

 these embellishments to the already beautiful countenance of our 

 common parent. 



In their progress through the county, the attention of the 

 committee was frequently attracted by noble fields of Indian 

 corn. We know of nothing which can render a farm more 

 worthy of the society's premium, than a plentiful crop of this 

 valuable grain. In the husbandman's provision for himself, his 

 family, and his cattle, it is an indispensable article. One of our 

 New-England poets has said, that " all his bones were made of 

 Indian corn ;" and we cannot doubt that it enters largely into 

 the composition of our Yankee blood and muscle, and that its 

 invigorating energies give strength and health to the sons, and 

 beauty and loveliness to the wives and daughters of New- 

 England husbandmen. We compassionate the depravity of 

 taste that cannot relish a jonny-cake, and despise the fastidious- 

 ness of appetite that cannot make a supper on hasty-pudding. 



The spirit of improvement is signally displayed in many parts 

 of the county, in the construction of stone walls. This is a 

 branch of industry which is worthy of high commendation. 

 The work of building a good wall is a laborious employment, 

 and requires something more than an ordinary degree of physi- 

 cal power. But it is labor well expended. A farmer who gets 

 his premises enclosed with a substantial fence of this descrip- 

 tion may defy his neighbor's cattle, however unruly ; and if his 

 division fences are of a like construction, his own animals will 

 learn to be content in their appropriate enclosures, or at least 

 will prefer feeding in the pasture where he places them, to the 

 hazard of breaking their legs by leaping into his mowing lots 

 and cornfields. The committee would hardly be justified if they 

 neglected to notice, particularly, the walls on the farms of 

 Messrs. A. Carleton and E. P. Spaulding, of Chelmsford, O. 

 C. Rogers, of Woburn, and Stephen Howe, of Marlboro'. 

 Portions of the walls on some of these farms were five feet in 



