FARMERS' CONVENTION.

The annual Farmers' Convention under the auspices of the Board was held at the Town Hall in Danbury on Dec. 11, 12, and 13. The weather on the morning of the 11th was very inauspicious and somewhat diminished the usual attendance on the first day, but nevertheless, some seventy-five representative agriculturists from every section of the State were present at the opening session.

Hon. ALBERT DAY, of Brooklyn, Vice-President of the Board, called the meeting to order at 10.30, and said:

Gentlemen of the Convention:

I congratulate you upon meeting again on this, the twenty-second annual meeting of the Board of Agriculture; upon this spacious hall, which has been so generously provided for our use; upon the words of welcome and good cheer that we receive from the inhabitants of this place. Our first duty is to call upon God in prayer, that He will forgive our sins and be with us and direct us throughout life. Will you unite with the Rev. Dr. MAXWELL in prayer.

As introductory to the prayer the Doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," was sung by a quartette consisting of Mr. and Mrs. CORNISH of Glastonbury, Mrs. GOLD of West Cornwall, and Mr. CHAS. W. LEE of Coventry.

PRAYER BY THE REV. J. L. Maxwell.

O God, our Heavenly Father! we desire to worship and praise Thee this day. We thank Thee that the earth is filled with such riches. We praise Thy name that Thou hast given man such a glorious habitation; that Thou hast fitted it up for his necessities; that Thou hast filled the earth with Thy benefactions. We thank Thee for the munificence of Thy bounties; that the world abounds with all that is essential for man's comfort and good; for the varied

character of the products of the earth; for the wonderful response that the earth doth make to the efforts of the sons of toil, We thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for what Thou hast stored in the earth and spread on the surface of the earth. We thank Thee for abundant harvests and for all the prosperity Thou hast granted unto the tillers of the soil.

Wilt thou graciously grant Thy presence and Thy blessing this day, Heavenly Father, to those who are assembled here in the interests of agriculture; we thank Thee for what Thou hast accomplished by them in the past, and we pray that Thou wilt bless them in their efforts at this time. We ask that Thou will be with them in their discussions, that Thou wilt cause still greater advancement in all things that make for good in the interests of agriculture. We thank Thee for the great advancement that has been made in the science of farming in the days in which we live, for all the light that has been thrown upon this noble occupation. We thank Thee for the honor Thou hast put upon husbandry. Be gracious, Heavenly Father, and grant that still there may be wisdom; that every man may seek light from Heaven and direc tion from God in the conduct of these affairs in which they are brought very near to the Father who created the heavens and the earth. Grant Thy guidance and direction now, we pray Thee, that all that shall be done in these meetings may be done for Thy glory and for the good of our country. Fit us for all the responsibilities of life, that we may be equal to the demands that are made upon us, and at last, wilt Thou receive us to our home in heaven, through the riches of grace in Christ Jesus our Redeemer. Amen.

Vice-President DAY.-I have now the pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, of introducing Judge Brewster, of this town.

ADDRESS OF HON. LYMAN D. BREWSTER.

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen:

I am somewhat in the condition of the Michigan man who would not attend his own wedding because he had not been invited. (Laughter.) He said he did not want his mother-in-law to get ahead of him at the start.

Some weeks ago the indefatigable Treasurer of Danbury Society told me that he wished me to say a few words this morning to the

Board of Agriculture. Now, here in Danbury, as you know, whenever we are called upon to do anything for the Danbury Fair, we can only answer, "Aye, aye, sir," and no matter what it is, we are on deck and at it instanter. But upon seeing the programme of these meetings, a short time afterwards, and finding nothing upon it in regard to anybody's making the welcoming speech, I supposed like the Michigan man, I was not invited, and until last evening, about bed time, I did not understand that any thing was expected of me on this occasion. So that, although I am sorry on your account that the weather is so bad, I am very glad on my own, because I shall speak to a small audience of farmers, instead of to the larger audience that would otherwise have assembled here.

It is a very agreeable privilege for me to welcome you in behalf of the Danbury Society. We are glad that you have come. We trust you will have a pleasant and profitable session, and will be glad you have been here. We welcome you because of the great interest which you represent—the greatest and most important of all the industries as old as Adam, as wide as the world. Whenever I think of the nobility and antiquity of your occupation, I am reminded of those stirring lines written, I believe, for one of the first agricultural societies of this country, certainly one of the first county societies, up in old Berkshire, close by where I was born, by William Cullen Bryant; and I can well remember how it used to be sung and chorused in the old singing-schools. If you will pardon me, I will repeat two of the verses which come to me

now.

"Far back in the ages

The plow with wreaths was crowned,
And hands of kings and sages
Entwined the chaplets round."

"Honor waits o'er all the earth,
Through endless generations,

The art that calls the harvest forth

And feeds the expectant nations."

And why should not "honor wait upon the art that calls the harvest forth"? The farmer is the friend of every man and every man is the friend of the farmer, because by him the world is clothed and fed. Other conventions, other caucuses, other meetings come together for some specific purpose, in the interest of a

sect or of a class; this meeting, this object is for everybody, for all time.

We welcome you, gentlemen, not only on account of the interest which you represent and in which you are so deeply interested, but for the work that you have done in the past, in the varied and interesting discussion at your meetings, in the papers read, and in the brief but valuable suggestions which have been made in connection with those papers. I do not know of any library of the

same number of books so valuable to the farmers of Connecticut as the reports of this board made from year to year. I cannot conceive of anything more valuable and interesting to them.

And, gentlemen, we welcome you for what you are going to do here this week, if we can take this programme as a fair prophecy of "the feast of fat things" to come. It seems as though the first day the doctors were to have it pretty much their own way, and, considering the weather and the condition of things, that is a very proper provision for them. The second day is devoted to the professors, who will tell you about the work of the Experiment Stations. The third day is devoted to the consideration of the important questions connected with the dairy interest. It ought to be the cream of the session. Then there is to be the Question Box,— "The Gold-en Question Box," I call it, which is always the spiciest of all to me. Now, if anybody, with all this before him, is not pleased and instructed, he must be either a very intelligent man or very hard to please.

I am not going to undertake to do what good Horace Greeley, thirty years ago, said every clergyman, every lawyer, every doctor, and every business man, thought he was capable of doing, that is, of telling farmers how to farm, what they ought to do, and what they ought not to do; and for two reasons. The first is, because it was my luck to hear Mr. Horace Greeley, sometime afterwards deliberately affirm, that the only way the land west of the Mississippi River could ever be brought under cultivation, was by sowing Canada thistles! Another reason is, I have been a farmer myself; I was trained and brought up as a farmer's boy; I know something about hard hacks and bog swamps, and the difficulties of the farmer's position in Connecticut. But let me suggest one topic which. I see has been discussed at other meetings of this Board of Agriculture very extensively, and which is certainly a pertinent, indeed, a burning question. I refer to the decadence of

our hill-side country towns as compared with the growth of our manufacturing places. In a town just south of us there are thirty farms for sale, at anybody's price, as I have been told by a real estate agent, who has many of them for sale. And that is simply a sample of what you will find all around us in the hill agricultural towns. Now I think that the lesson which your secretary has inculcated time and again, that if a farm is intelligently managed, scientifically and systematically cultivated, farming will pay in Connecticut as well as anywhere, is one of the great lessons which you have to teach us here and now. I know you are capable of doing it if anybody can. And my next suggestion is exactly in the same line to show not only that farming will pay, but that it may be made attractive and interesting, so that the great cities will not swallow up all the young men in the country, leaving the hill towns to be depopulated.

A single word in regard to this place of ours, if you will excuse my being rather more diffuse than I expected to be when I started. Danbury is chiefly a manufacturing town, with some twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom perhaps, some sixteen thousand get their livelihood directly or indirectly from the one great business of the place, the hatting industry. We are now, as the farmer says, "between hay and grass." We are a little too big for a borough, and we have not yet become a city, although we hope soon to be, perhaps during the next year. I believe you will find this is not only a thriving and lively town, but a hospitable one. The three specialties of Danbury, I believe, are Derby hats, baked beans, and the Danbury Fair. (Laughter and applause.) I am not going to give away the secret of the first two, because that wouldn't do; but the third is an open secret. The Danbury Fair is the most successful institution in its way in New England, because it is managed on business principles, and has been so managed ever since it started. You find everything there, and everybody comes to see everything and everybody else who is there. If you want to find somebody whom you have not seen for the last twenty years, just stand at the door of the big tent at the entrance of the grounds during the Fair week, and you will be sure to find him. I think, by the way, if our friends, the officers of this board, had consulted directly with the officers of Danbury Fair in regard to the weather, they would have had fine and pleasant weather for their meetings, for I believe the Fair has never missed a good week since it started.