35 



contact with our Society, and participation in its objects and labors, 

 would promote the interest of every individual farmer. Its en- 

 couragements and rewards are distributed with impartiality, and 

 its sole aim is to repay with large increase the time or money that 

 each person contributes. 



Hitherto our fairs have been supplied with valuable and beauti- 

 ful articles from the field, the stall and the Avorkshop, but chiefly 

 contributed by a few towns. Now in every town we have found 

 good farmers, who might add to the pleasure and the profit of the 

 occasion, by bringing something of their own growth or raising, or 

 by detailed statements of particular crops. A great amount of 

 useful knowledge respecting the best methods of conducting vari- 

 ous processes in draining, seeding, manuring, reclaiming meadows 

 and other details, is lost to the community by the backwardness 

 or indifference of those who conduct these operations. 



In several towns in this county agriculture is but little attended 

 to. In these towns the people are mostly devoted to mechanical 

 pursuits. ' Much land that was formerly ploughed is now grown 

 over with young wood, probably the most profitable use that could 

 be made of it. It is a common remark that there is more wood- 

 land and less wood than there was twenty years ago. The rail- 

 roads and manufacturing and mechanic villages have rapidly in- 

 creased the value of wood, Avhich has risen from three to six dol- 

 lars a cord. This rise has induced some sowing of wood seed and 

 setting out of young forest trees. We would refer the reader, for 

 further information and examples, to the Report of the Committee 

 on Forest Trees, contained in this volume, the author of that Re- 

 port being a member of the Visiting Committee. 



These and several other instances, on a smaller scale, show that 

 the growth of wood may be made profitable on poor land. 



No part of this county is exclusively agricultural. There are 

 not more than one or two towns in which the produce of agricul- 

 tural labor equals in value the products of manufactures. In 

 most towns the latter exceed the former from three to ten or 

 twelve times in value ; and where the difference is greatest, the 

 progress of agriculture is slowest. We may take a single article 

 as an illustration. In the southern and south-eastern towns there 

 is very little corn fodder raised, an article which the farmers in 

 the northern and western towns consider indispensable to success, 



