WHAT MIND WILL DO IN AGRICULTURE. 
97 
WHAT MIND WILL DO IN AGRICULTURE. 
For twenty years, John Delafield, Esq., now 
of the county of Seneca, and recently elected 
President of the New-York State Agricultural 
Society, was a leading and successful hanker 
in the city of New York, at the head of one of 
its largest institutions. Seven o,r eight years 
since, he retired to the banks of Seneca Lake, 
where he had purchased a fine farm, and com¬ 
menced, without early experience or knowledge 
in agriculture, the profession of a farmer. Car¬ 
rying into his new vocation the same energy 
of action and thought, which had distinguished 
his career through his active business life, he 
soon acquired the necessary knowledge for the 
* successful cultivation of his farm; and by his 
good sense and enterprise, soon won the confi¬ 
dence of the farmers of Seneca, who elected 
him president of their county society, in which 
position he effected more for the progress of 
cultivation among them than any other indi¬ 
vidual had ever done in that county. 
Within the last year, Mr. Delafield made an 
agricultural survey of the county of Seneca, 
under the auspices of the state society, proba¬ 
bly the most complete in its details of any agri¬ 
cultural survey ever made in the United States. 
The report accompanying the survey has re¬ 
ceived full approbation of the society, and is to 
be published in the forthcoming volume of its 
transactions. The document is replete with 
every kind of information in regard to the agri¬ 
culture of the county, its various statistics, 
population, pursuits, &c. 
The labor of making this survey occupied 
Mr. Delafield eight months of the year past, 
and in his bill of expenses, rendered the society, 
which was only a few hundred dollars, he left 
it with a committe of that body to fix the wages 
which he should have for his personal services, 
stating, that, while absent from home, he had 
hired one extra man to oversee his farm work, 
but generously adding that as this might be¬ 
come a precedent for the government of the 
society in its future county surveys, the com¬ 
mittee should fix a moderate rate of compensa¬ 
tion for such services. The committee did fix 
the rate, and allowed Mr. Delafield, (who in past 
years, at the hands of his board of directors in 
Wall street, received his $5,000 per annum,) 
$14 a month for his labor, and $6 for his 
board, besides a proportionably compensatory 
amount for the use of his horse and carriage 
while making the survey. This he declared 
was perfectly satisfactory; and that he felt 
prouder of the compensation for that labor, than 
any which he had ever performed, and as being 
the most truly useful work of his life ! 
In this simple transaction, is an example as 
worthy of record as any transmitted to us in 
Roman history. Mr. Delafield is now the honor¬ 
ed head of our state society, under whose 
direction we have every confidence that it will 
achieve new laurels, and add to its already 
world-wide reputation for usefulness and honor. 
New York , January , 1851. L. 
PROTECTION OF SHEEP AGAINST DOGS. 
The destruction of sheep by dogs has for a 
long time proved a serious evil in several of our 
neighboring counties. We know that many 
farmers have been obliged entirely to discon¬ 
tinue the raising of sheep, in consequence of 
the great insecurity from dogs being allowed to 
roam at large in their neighborhood. There 
are no animals more profitable to the farmer 
than sheep, and it is an abridgment of his rights 
and an injury to the public that the propaga¬ 
tion of sheep must give way to that of dogs. 
The dog is useful in his place, but that place is 
his master’s own premises ; elsewhere, he is a 
nuisance, and when he becomes dangerous, it 
is time that the law should interfere. 
The present law is incommensurate for the 
protection of the farmer in his sheep. The tax 
upon dogs is entirely inadequate to produce 
anything like a sufficient fund to respond for 
the damages done by them to sheep, and the 
county is not interested in its collection be¬ 
cause there is no responsibility beyond the 
amount of the fund. In many towns, there are 
persons who own several dogs who could not 
pay for one sheep. 
The following petition to the legislature has 
been prepared, and copies will be left at our 
office for circulation and signature. 
To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of 
New York: 
The petition of the subscribers represents : 
That they are farmers and desirous of contin¬ 
uing the breeding of sheep, which they deem as 
profitable stock as any they can have upon 
their farms. The only difficulty is the destruc¬ 
tion of sheep by dogs. These two species of 
animals cannot exist in the same neighborhood, 
if the dogs are allowed to roam at large. It is 
not only the cruel slaughter of the sheep which 
occasions loss to your petitioners, but flocks, 
which have once been attacked by the dogs, 
are rendered unmanageable and comparatively 
valueless. As dogs are more or less the ene¬ 
mies of sheep, and if some are not of them- 
