and it gives satisfaction. I even go along the roads, where I can find anything. If I get a load of anything nice, as I conceive, that goes on the fields. I save it as carefully as a load of barn-yard manure.

Mr. WISE, of Greene. The gentleman suggested sending straw to town, to get it manufactured into manure. I think if I did so, I should be a suf

ferer by it.

Colonel YOUNG. I have never been troubled with loss. The only trouble I have had was to know that they went by directions, not to feed the straw.

Mr. WISE. You must necessarily come short, I would think.

Colonel YOUNG. After I furnish the straw, I go from place to place and take the manure away. If I get a load of manure, and it is not fit to be distributed immediately, it is placed in the barn-yard. If it is fit, it goes upon one of the fields. I never get bad weeds. If I find any of my parties allowing weeds, or anything of the kind, to be mixed in, I cease to furnish straw.

D. H. FORESMAN, of Lycoming. I think you would be apt to gather up a good many Canada thistles.

Colonel YOUNG. I do not have them in my neighborhood.

Professor J. HAMILTON, of State College. I think it would be dangerous in some localities to take manure from town and distribute it upon the land; but to put it on a heap, until thoroughly rotted, would be a good remedy.

D. H. FORESMAN, of Lycoming. I consider this one of the most important subjects that has been before this Board, and particularly for the West Branch valley. They are more interested in keeping their farms in a high state of cultivation, than they are in fruit growing or breeding stock. Therefore, the ideas thrown out by Colonel Young's address, (which are so new to me, and so different from my plans and mode of farming.) I would like to have thoroughly understood. I cannot make manure at all of the sweepings, either of the streets or of the ditches, without first making a compost. Without hauling it on piles, and leaving it lay there, and mixing it with lime and other things, I find it is a damage. I live in the upper end of the city of Williamsport, where we have a mile of Nicholson pavement, and we have the liberty of hauling away any part of the offal. We have hundreds of loads taken away every year. Living there myself, and having the chairmanship of the highway committee of that place, I have the privilege of using the best of this. I hauled some, and it seemed to damage every crop I put it on. I then told my farmer to haul it to the farms on the river bottom. We then took this material, made it into piles, and put with it slacked lime. We then put it on the ground, and afterwards could see the effects; but putting it on in the manner Colonel Young states, it was a damage in every instance to my crops.

As to hauling straw, I never allow one single straw to go off my farm, or hay, or anything of the kind. Everything must be consumed on the farm. Everything must go through the stables. It has been my experience for nearly twenty years, living near the city, to have frequent requests for straw, and I am bothered every day almost for that very purpose. It is not very desirable for us living near cities not to keep straw for sale; but we cannot afford to let it go off our farms. I keep everything on I can; and we feed everything possible-all the hay, corn, fodder, and everything of the kind we have. We generally utilize everything in this way, and with the assistance of lime, we keep our farms up to the condition they are now in.

Mr. KURTZ, of Lancaster. I do not think there is a flaw in the essay, so far as the production of manure is concerned, except that he might have used a little lime. I think if he will try lime, he will find out its advantages. I have been through the same process as Colonel Young. I used all the offal from the tannery, the rubbish and scrapings from the streets; and I took it out to the farm, and put it on the land, and if I should tell you the results, you would not believe it, I know. I have put on one field I do not know how many loads of ashes from the yard, and tan bark, and rubbish from the streets of the town, no matter where it came from. On this nine or ten acres I raised, in two successive years, in wheat and in tobacco, $4,700 worth. I bought the land for $3,000. I sold the tobacco of four and one half acres for $1,700. The balance in wheat brought one hundred and seventy-two bushels, which I disposed of at $1 55 per bushel. The year before I sold the tobacco and wheat at such prices that the two years' proceeds amounted to $4,700. Once when I took a farm, I kept over two hundred head of cattle. Having other duties to attend to besides farming, I lost on the cattle directly, but I found I had a large quantity of manure. I took it, and put it on the land, and there were two hundred and fifty loads. But I did better than Mr. Young; I added lime as a top dressing, and it paid me better in the end. I learned the value of the street manure from a German in my lumber-yard. He and his wife were workers. She would go and gather all the waste manure she could on the streets, and they would apply it in the garden. Pretty soon they owned another house. Colonel Young has added another farm.

As to the use of the deposits of dams, when I was a boy, I hauled out of the dam two hundred loads. We had the farm rented. The dam did not belong to the man who owned the farm, but to a neighboring farmer. He said we might have the deposit. It was about three and a half feet deep. I heard my father say the benefits lasted for ten years in that very field. These deposits are no doubt of great value as a manure, and with a little lime added, the value is much increased.

THOMAS J. EDGE, (Secretary.) Referring to Mr. Foresman's remarks, is it not possible that the wood from the pavement on which the manure was gathered, prevented a beneficial effect? Wood ground up does not make a very good manure. Colonel Young uses an entirely different article; much of what he uses both he and Mr. Beebe called "muck."

Colonel YOUNG, of Dauphin. I reclaimed thirty acres of land, which had a deposit from two to seven feet thick, and from that locality I hauled thousands of loads. The place was quite swampy, but by underdraining and otherwise, I dried the ground, so that now it is one of the most productive places on the whole tract.

The SECRETARY.

around?

Was it fibrous matter, or was it more like the earth

Colonel Young. Neither. In the spring of the year it would all fill up, and be covered with water, and each year this would leave a deposit. Perhaps this had been going on from the formation of the world.

The PRESIDENT, (Governor Hartranft.) Seventeen thousand years? Colonel YOUNG. Yes, sir; all of that. [Laughter.]

Mr. H. M. ENGLE, of Lancaster. The remark of Mr. Foresman would seem to be incomplete, in that what he gathered was not simply the droppings on the road, but woody matter from that Nicholson pavement. Near towns it is customary for some farmers to furnish straw to stables for the manure. Where they can get it, saw-dust is sometimes purchased for manure, but we find it is worthless, without lime to decompose it, which I sup

pose it will do. But it creates fungus, so we have abandoned it, and would not take it, and bestow it upon our land for any crop.

Colonel YOUNG. I have had some experience with saw-dust and shavings, but they would not bring the answer at all.

Mr. KURTZ. There is a great difference. There is the tannic acid in the tan that would destroy a Canada thistle. It depends much on the article used. Mr. KELLER, of Schuylkill county. As the manure question takes a very wide range, perhaps it is the most profitable subject we can discuss this session. Of the tannic acid, the gentleman is correct, but in the use of tan, that can be got over. In Schuylkill county, by combining straw and tan, they make very good manure. Piling it in large heaps we find it destroys the seeds. Where an article of itself is too strong, it is very much improved by alternating it with layers of earth.

The essays embraced in the programme prepared by the committee having all been read and discussed, the Board proceeded to the consideration of resolutions and other business.

By request, W. G. Moore was released from service on the Executive Committee, and W. S. Roland, substituted.

M. C. BEEBE offered the following, which was referred to a special committee, consisting of Messrs. Beebe and Hamilton:

Resolved, That the Committee on Legislation be instructed to take measures to procure the repeal of the acts of 1700 and 1784, in relation to fences in this Commonwealth.

JOHN P. EDGE offered the following, which, after considerations by sections, was adopted:

WHEREAS, The annual reports of the State Agricultural Society, and other scources of information, show that few, if any, of the county agricultural societies encourage or require the production and preparation of essays or other papers on subjects pertaining to agriculture by their members, and thereby eliciting discussion and emulation among them:

And whereas, It is important that every agency should be used to raise the standard of intelligence among the tillers of the soil; therefore,

Be it resolved, That this Board recommend that all county and local societies adopt a system of premiums and diplomas for the best papers on subjects which may be assigned for competition, to classes of three or more persons who may be volunteers or designated by the presiding officer.

Resolved, also, That it is recommended to all local societies holding fairs or exhibitions, to offer premiums or diplomas to the chairman of the committee of exhibits who shall furnish the best and most elaborate report, describing the objects in competition, the causes of success and failure, &c. Resolved, further, That we recommend that each county or district society shall establish a scholarship in the Pennsylvania State College, and shall select from the sons or daughters of its members, by a competitive examination, the persons who shall enjoy its benefits, said persons to have been previously instructed in the public or normal schools of the State. On motion of M. C. BEEBE, all unfinished business was referred to the Executive Committee.

Adjourned to meet at the call of the Executive Committee.

LI

At a meeting of the Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture, held at Doylestown, May 30, 1878, Board called to order at two, P. M., by Vice President BEEBE in the chair.

Present-Messrs. Schell, Edge, (J. P.,) Young, Hood, Robinson, Beebe, Moore, Hamilton, Fahnestock, Roland, Sterling, Smith, Reeder, Banks, Foresman, Yeakle, Keller, Eves, Musselman, McFarland, and Secretary.

C. C. Musselman, of Somerset, and Chandlee Eves, of Columbia, presented credentials of election from their respective societies, which, on motion, were referred to a committee, consisting of Messrs. J. P. Edge, Hamilton, and Banks, with instructions to report at next session of the Board as to the rights of these gentlemen to membership in the Board, and also to define the term of their membership. They were also directed to inquire into the right of the Rich Hill Fair Association to a membership in the Board.

Mr. Henry T. Darlington, on behalf of the citizens of Doylestown and its vicinity, then addressed the Board, as follows:

Mr. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE BOARD: It is a pleasant duty to welcome to our town and county the official representatives of the agriculture of Pennsylvania. Chosen by the intelligent practical farmers of each county to stand for them as members of this central body, we have a right to regard you as the salt of your occupation, and to feel honored by your presence here. We shall try, on our part, to make your visit a pleasant and profitable one, and to illustrate as best we can how a prosperous and contented community can be built up almost entirely upon the results of agricultural labor.

You have met to-day, for the first time outside of the State capital, in one of the three original counties of the Commonwealth, organized bb William Penn very nearly two centuries ago. Our territory was largely settled by the very first comers to America under his charter, and at a time when the region beyond the Susquehanna was yet an unknown wilderness, the first generation had passed away, and their children and grandchildren possessed the land. This was an old settled county one hundred and twenty years ago, when Braddock's men were driven from the forks of the Ohio, and Bedford was the utmost outpost of the English. Under the peaceful policy of Penn and his followers, Bucks county was never harrassed by Indian warfare, and her settlers hewed down the forests and plowed their fields in complete security. The Quaker farmers from England found a congenial soil and climate for their vocation in the lower and central townships; and upon these, to the northward and westward, was imposed a layer of emigrants of Scotch-Irish origin, who planted their churches almost before they did their crops, and whose decendants still furnish a large percentage of our people. Then came the solid German race, composed of Mennonites and Dunkards, who vied with the Friends in their application to the arts of industry and peace; and of Lutherans and Reformers, from another part of Germany, more active and mercurial in their nature, and ready to do their part as members of the general body. The elements of population thus furnished in the beginning have since been little changed. The decendants of the original settlers are still here, and give character and substance to our population. The spirit of peace and prosperity remains, though thousands of the sons and daughters of Burks have gone from us to plant new homes in the fertile prairies of the West.

Founded on this basis, the only change that our industrial interests have known is that of gradual but sure development. Bucks county, of all the eastern counties of Pennsylvania, is peculiarly the home of the agriculturist. Her natural advantages are not superior to those enjoyed by her sister counties of Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware, all included, like herself, in the productive Delaware valley, but in some respects they have been more largely developed. Having no available water-power or other great inducements to manufacturing enterprise, the energies of her people have been mostly directed to the various forms of agriculture. The result is the comfortable maintenance of seventy thousand people upon an area of six hundred square miles, with no concentration in large towns or cities, and with the goods of this life distributed with remarkable equality. We have no rich people, as the term goes, among us; and, fortunately, but few poor ones who belong strictly to our soil. We rest mainly upon the golden mean of comfort and competence, where every one can have enough to support him if he chooses to earn it, and no one has anything to waste. With the increase of rapid avenues to market, our methods of agriculture have undergone a change in detail, but not in general principle. Hundreds of our dairy farmers now sell milk instead of butter; they buy grain and feed from abroad, instead of being sellers themselves; the railroad car has taken the place of the market wagon; they handle dollars where their fathers were satisfied with dimes; they read newspapers and magazines, attend farmers' clubs and teachers' institutes, use the best machinery, consult the official weather predictions, and keep themselves well informed in all that concerns their particular interests. The intelligent Pennsylvania farmer of to-day, of whom the Bucks county farmer is a type, is by no means the same man that filled his place half a century ago. He is better developed in every direction. He is growing to know his importance and his needs, and in the organization of the official body which I now welcome here, we see but a just recognition of his claims by the law-making power of the State.

Although the Board of Agriculture is yet little known and understood by the people at large, its objects are so worthy that if properly supported and administered they will soon become generally appreciated, and its work will be strengthened by the approval and active help of our farmers. The manner in which it is constituted commends it to our judgement, and the efficiency with which it has been managed, with limited means, has tended to confirm the good impression. The agricultural interests of the State have long needed a better means of expression than any that existed under State or local associations. The desire of money-making has too often been permitted to obscure the legitimate work of agricultural societies, and progressive farmers have looked in vain to them as leaders in the march of improvement. Now that we have the promise of something more generous and liberal in its scope, with the Executive of the State as its official head, and a practical farmer as its active representative, we may justly hope for better work in behalf of intelligent agriculture. Every owner and tiller of the soil, who cares for the better development of his vocation and larger rewards for his capital and labor, should help forward the usefulness of the Board, according to his ability. They should give it praise when praise is deserved, contribute to its stores of information, correct its work when mistakes are made, and profit by the varied knowledge which its members and agents shall gather and spread before the people. Believing that the presence of the Board in Bucks county, the home of agriculture, is justly esteemed by her farmers, and by her citizens of all occupations, I welcome you most heartily and cordially to her soil. I