246 . TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



An exhibition of domestic manufactures was also held there. 

 An excellent address was delivered by the president of the 

 society. In it we think the following passages are worth repeat- 

 ing, in reference to fruit trees, 



" We do not let the roots of our fruit trees have a sufficient 

 share of cold in winter. Sometimes, before the ground is suffi- 

 ciently frozen to reach the most nutritive roots of our fruit trees^ 

 snow falls and communicates a genial warmth to the soil which 

 accompanied with the moisture of the melting show in spring 

 starts its vegetation too early 1 Late frosts then come and give 

 fatal checks to their fruit production. The remedy is to take 

 away early in winter the snow about the roots of the delicate fruit 

 trees — peach for instance — that their roots may have their share 

 of the cold. Then let snow cover up and it preserves them cold 

 until the proper period for vegetation." 



After the President had closed, Governor Clinton, by request, 

 made the following remarks : 



" When we recollect that scarcely twenty years have passed 

 away since the first inhabitant erected his hut in this county ^ 

 and when we see it now with flourishing villages characterized 

 by intelligent >views and well directed exertions, a soil eminently 

 fertile and climate salubrious, and looking to those artificial 

 facilities which the improvement of our internal navigation and 

 the markets of the north and the south, connecting with our 

 interior seas, we are persuaded of the great future prosperity of 

 this region and State at large. 



"You have, gentlemen, chosen wisely the true road to prosperity, 

 for agriculture is the source of subsistence, subsistence is the 

 basis of population, and population is the foundation of pros- 

 perity and power. It is the parent of individual and national 

 opulence ! It comprises all the sources of wealth — land, capital, 

 labor — and how favorable to health, to wisdom and contempla- 

 tion, by exercise and activity friends of virtue, and (to adopt the 

 emphatic language of a sublime Poet,) 



" Sweet peace which goodness bosoms ever," 



we must all admit, that as it was the first, it is also the best pur- 

 suit of mankind." 



Gov. Clinton then urged societies to promote it and also its 

 invariable companion, domestic numufactures. 



It is a subject of high felicitation to witness now a confederacy 

 of scientific and practical men — to behold the experienced agricul- 

 turist and the enlightened professional man combining their 



