OF THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 1877. EDITED BY CHARLES L. FLINT, SECRETARY OF THE STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. BOSTON: Band, Abery, & Co., Printers to the Commonwealth, 117 FRANKLIN STREET. PREFACE. THE distinguishing feature of this Report is the complete general index of the whole Second Series from 1853 to 1877 inclusive. It will add very much to the value of all the Reports. A book without an index is very much like a spade without a handle. If a book is worth any thing, it is worth vastly more when it is provided with the means of finding what it contains; and the same is true of any series of books. The twenty-five Reports contain a vast number of thoroughly first-class scientific and practical papers and discussions, covering a wide range of topics relating to almost every department of farm industry. They constitute something of a farmer's library of themselves; and the index was regarded as an essential requisite to their completeness. I am indebted to Col. Wilder for the admirable steel plate which forms the frontispiece of the Report, and to Capt. John B. Moore for the plate illustrating his new seedling grape, also to Mr. Cook of Foxborough for the striking likeness of his horse "Herald," formerly known as "Graphic." He was sired by Smuggler, dam, Cook's Kitty Clyde. This remarkable colt was bred by W. T. Cook, Esq., of Foxborough, Mass., and was foaled Aug. 12, 1874. When only three weeks old, he was shown at the New-England Fair held in Rhode Island, where he received the first premium of the society for horse colts over a field of nineteen entries; his extraordinary limbs and muscular development attracting marked attention from breeders and horsemen even at that early age. In 1875 he was exhibited at the same fair, held in New Hampshire, where the first premium was again awarded him over a field of twenty-two entries, among which were some of the finest yearlings ever shown in New England. In 1876, at the Centennial Horse Exhibition held in Philadelphia, the highest honors in the two-year-old class for trotting stallions were awarded to him. He is a very rapid walker; and his action in trotting is clean, free, and level, showing evidence of great speed. That he will make a successful sire is evident from the fact that he has already shown himself possessed of the power of endowing his get with his own wonderful development of both limbs and muscle. His pedigree is as follows: : |