REPORTS OF COMMITTEES. 



SUMMER CROPS. 



The examination of summer crops, while conducted with as much expe- 

 dition as possible, — since to the farmer at the important season when these 

 duties call him, time is valuable — was thoroughly made, and included a 

 careful survey of the 122 crops entered for premiums. 



Our beautiful county, with its wealth of scenery and its many fine and 

 well-kept farms, is a pleasant field for summer driving, and we cannot but 

 feel that we have in it a noble heritage. With the aid they may now com- 

 mand, our young' men surely cannot build themselves worthier, happier, or 

 more useful lives and homes than by pursuing here a system of improved 

 agriculture. High farming will bring even our hilltops to a condition of 

 fertility which many of us will now scarcely believe possible, and the con- 

 venience of our markets ought to stimulate the production of many of those 

 lesser crops which often prove the most remunerative on the faim. 



One word touching the awards. It is often a delicate and almost un- 

 gracious task to distinguish between slightly varying fields, when it may be 

 there is something superior in each — better tilth in one respect, and slightly 

 worse in another. Of course the strictest impartiality is required of a 

 committee of awards, and an almost judicial poise of the scale which decides 

 the result. The generous hospitality so freely tendered and so fully accept- 

 ed according to the present custom of entertainment during the examina- 

 tion, seems to add to the delicacy of the situation. While conscious of the 

 kindest receptions at so many farm houses, we feel half disposed to suggest 

 the renunciation by the Society, of this hospitality. To refuse "spoons' 7 to 

 the man who presents for your critical appreciation his "Old Rye" as well 

 as growing grain, may sometimes demand a firmness above the ordinary 

 stillness of a good matured committee. 



WINTER WHEAT-^5 ENTRIES. 



Wheat, as the grain of a high civilization, the foremost of cereals and 

 typical staff of life, has an importance and standing aside from its pecuniary 

 profit, which seems to give it a claim upon Massachusetts agriculture. The 

 Old Commonwealth will not entirely abandon wheat culture, and every 

 year some few fields show that a crop good may yet be produced in 

 Berkshire. 



