ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE HOUSATONIC AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. AT ITS 



ANNUAL EXHIBITION, HELD AT GREAT BARRINGTON, 



SEPTEMBER 29, 1893, 



BY REV. ROBERT BENNETT, 



Of Chelsea. Mass. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Honsatonic Agricultural 

 Society : — 

 I greatly appreciate 3^our cordial expression, and thank you 

 most heartily for the call to this agreeable service, in which I de- 

 sire to pay a worthy tribute to your industr\^, liberality, integrity 

 and honor. Whatever opinion we may entertain of the origin of 

 man, it is evident from the first annals that he was a gardener. 

 Happy and bright, and wise, and good, he walked the daisy dot- 

 ted lawn of Eden, amid the beauty of trees, the fragrance of flow- 

 ers, and the relish of everything that was good for food. And I 

 know not to what delightful eminence he might have attained, if 

 that handsome, inquisitive woman at his side had loved apples less, 

 and apricots more. Yet, notwithstanding so great a fall in horti- 

 culturnl stocks, and so great a discount on agriculture as to pro- 

 duce an antagonism of " Thornes and Thistles," man made vast 

 strides in husbandry and cattle culture, in the subjugation of the 

 soil, the forest, the quarry and the mine. And it is a fair question 

 whether with all our aids to civilization, our accumulations of 

 wealth, and our constructions of science, we have a cattle king- 

 to-day equal to the first Patriarch of the Hebrews, who was rich 

 in sheep and oxen, and who had " exceeding much cattle." Nor 

 is there, in m\^ opinion, a parallel corn buyer, to-day, with that 

 generous ruler of Egypt who amassed the seven sumptuous har- 

 vests of his empire, and afterwards dealt it out with a liberal hand, 

 in ample quanities, to an impoverished world. Neither do I think 

 there is a match, in these days, for the man of the land of Uz, 

 who had more driving stock than any ranchman on our plains, or 

 any wool grower of Australia. But the unexampled king of the 

 soil stands forth in the mighty monarch of Babylon. I venerate 

 the man who was born with such a fancy, and cultivated such 

 a pride, and who wedded to these such scientific skill, and 

 such magnificent wealth, as made his famous hanging gardens 



