ANNUAL REPORT—SOCIETIES. 
99 
With the present edition, and the present law regulating the 
distribution, the society is immediately upon publication so 
far reduced in its very limited supply that the secretary is 
obliged to deny hundreds of calls whose source and nature 
are such as to properly demand a more favorable response. 
Of volumes nearly twice as voluminous and expensive, Illi¬ 
nois regularly prints 10,000; Massachusetts, New York and 
, Ohio 10,000 to 30,000 copies. It would not become this soci¬ 
ety to make comparisons of its own reports with those of any 
other societies or boards of agriculture; but there can be no 
impropriety in the statement that if its transactions are worthy 
of being published at all, it would be economy for the state to 
distribute them more widely than at present. 
In bringing this quite lengthy report to a conclusion, we 
cannot forbear the expression in general terms, of the high 
degree of pleasure we have derived from the retrospect of the 
past ten years. True, we have found occasion to note many defi¬ 
ciencies and positive errors, in both policy and in practice ; and 
yet, as a whole, the record is one of which we may be proud. 
For we must not forget what these years have embraced. 
We # said “must not forget,” and yet is not every man’s con¬ 
sciousness proof that it is impossible to realize, even when we 
attempt to recall them, the terrible experiences of the first full 
half of that dark and trying period ? A period during which 
nearly one-fifth of the entire population were wrested from the 
peaceful pursuits of a rapidly growing productive industry, 
and converted into armies destined for conflicts among the 
most fierce and destructive known to modern times—a period 
too, of government exactions which have put every nerve and 
fiber to the strain as a means, first, of victory, and then of saw 
ing the nation from financial ruin. 
Is not this a marvel of national historv—that a war which 
i/ 
sacrificed myriads of lives and billions of treasure, should have 
left so few traces upon vast areas of the empire, indeed that 
within five years after its close, the slightly increased demands 
of the tax-gatherer, and the recurring anniversaries and re¬ 
unions of those who participated in its memorable achievements, 
