NOTE TO PAGE 50.

THE following "PLAN FOR SCHOLARSHIPS was proposed and adopted on this occasion:—

THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE, assembled around the festive board of Alma Mater, in.July, 1852, desirous of performing some act which shall at once redound to the good of the College, and cement more closely the bonds which unite classmates with each other, and classes with the University, and in the hope that their act may have the additional recommendation of extending the benefits of Harvard College instructions to increased numbers of meritorious youth of our country, hereby assent to and adopt the following plan for establishing a system of Scholarships in the College, viz. :—

1. A Scholarship shall be established by the payment of the sum of two thousand dollars to the Treasurer of Harvard College.

2. Every Class, which has one or more living members, shall have a right to establish one or more Scholarships.

3. No appropriation shall be made of the income of any Scholarship Fund unless the capital sum invested shall be, or shall have become by accumulation, at least two thousand dollars.

4. Any Class may pay any portion of a Scholarship Fund, at any time, to the Treasurer of the College in sums of not less than one hundred dollars at any one time.

5. The Treasurer of the College shall be requested to keep a separate account with each Scholarship, and to designate it by the year of the graduation of the Class, which shall have contributed the fund to endow said Scholarship.

6. Whenever a Class shall have made provision for a Scholarship, by the contribution of $2,000, or when the contribution shall have reached that sum by accumulation, it shall be competent for such Class, annually, to nominate any meritorious young man, young man, then a member of College, or about entering, as a suitable person to receive the income of the Scholarship of such Class, whether a descendant of a member of the Class or otherwise.

7. The Corporation, on consultation with the Faculty, may refuse to confirm any appointment made by a Class, without assigning reasons, and they may appropriate the income of the Scholarship of such Class for the remainder of the year to any meritorious student.

8. In selecting candidates to receive the benefits of Scholarships, neither the Class, the Corporation, nor the Faculty shall receive application, from any individual, to be placed upon the foundation of a Scholarship, except in writing.

9. The income arising from any Scholarship, not appropriated in any year, shall be invested as the capital for a new Scholarship; and any Scholarships so created shall, when completed, be termed University Scholarships, to be under the sole control of the Corporation.

10. No Class shall be allowed to make a nomination of any person to be the recipient of the income of a Scholarship at any other time than during Commencement-week; and, in case no nomination shall be made during the said week, the Corporation, on consultation with the Faculty, may appoint some one to be the recipient for that year, if they see fit so to do.

NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF, Secretary.

BOSTON, July 23, 1852.

AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS, BEFORE THE BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, OCTOBER 15, 1852.

I AM not insensible, Mr. President and gentlemen of the Bristol County Agricultural Society, how adventurous a thing it is for one who has had so little personal acquaintance with agriculture as myself for one who was born and brought up in a city of paved streets, in which it is our special boast that not a blade of grass is ever permitted to grow to undertake a formal address to a society of practical farmers.

There are those within hearing who know, however, and none better than yourself, sir, that I am no volunteer on this occasion and in this service; that I am not here with any presumptuous proffer of information or instruction, either to practical or to theoretical farmers; but that I have come in simple deference to the repeated solicitations of friends, and because I have never learned that great art which the fairer portion of my audience understand how to prize and how to practise, when teased by the importunity of admiring suitors, the art of saying no!

Seriously, my friends, I am here with a deep sense of my own insufficiency for these things, and with a full consciousness that there are hundreds around me to whom I might far better offer myself as a scholar, than as a teacher, upon any subject connected with the cultivation of the soil. And yet, being here, and the responsibility for my presence being thus fairly rested upon other shoulders, I do not intend to shrink from the legitimate service of the occasion. Having once put my hand to the plough, I am not disposed" to look back," but shall proceed to break up such

a furrow as I can, to turn over as large a slice as I am able, in some corner or other of the wide field of agricultural discussion. Before entering, however, upon the graver topics of the day, let me give expression to the emotions of pleasure with which I have always witnessed these Farmers' Festivals, as often as I have had an opportunity of attending them. They seem to me to come nearer to fulfilling the true idea of republican holidays, than any which our country has hitherto afforded. I know not how much they may do for the great interest which they are primarily designed to promote. It might not be easy to measure their precise effect in improving the cultivation, or enlarging the yield, of the soil, though, even as to these ends, their influence, I am persuaded, is by no means inconsiderable. No one, indeed, can doubt, that for spreading information, for exciting and directing inquiry, for encouraging experiment, for stimulating emulation, and for exhibiting the practical and beneficial results of them all, such occasions furnish means and opportunities which could be supplied in no other way; and I venture to say, that there is not a farmer before me at this moment, who, if he should be rebuked on his return by some stay-at-home neighbor or by some over-anxious spouse, as having lost a day in attending the cattle-show, would not confidently reply, that, instead of losing one day, he had gained ten, in the new ideas and fresh incentives. which he had brought back for his future efforts.

But, however this may be, the influence of such occasions in other ways is even more appreciable. Their influence in the cultivation of good feelings and good fellowship among the friends of agriculture, and of labor generally, in different parts of the State and of the nation; their efficacy in sowing the seeds and increasing the harvest of mutual acquaintance, mutual regard, mutual respect, among all, of all classes, sexes, and occupations, who attend them; their annual operation in garnering up in the hearts of each one of us a seasonable supply of good-will and friendly sentiment towards each other, against the day when personal competitions or political conflicts shall come round to bring blight and mildew to so many of the nobler feelings of the soul, and to threaten starvation and famine to the whole better part of our nature, these are among the results of such festivals

as this, which must ever commend them to the regard of every Christian philanthropist.

You are here, my friends, from all quarters of the Old Colony, and from many other parts of the Commonwealth and of the country, from all pursuits and professions and political parties, to join hands and hearts in furtherance of the great industrial interests of the people. Some of you are here as practical producers, proud to display the results of your own labor and skill in the field or the dairy; and some of you have come as amateurs, gratified to behold the successes and achievements of your neighbors or friends. And we have all come as consumers, whether of our own or of other people's produce; and we all rejoice in the assurances and evidences which such occasions afford, that it will not be the fault of the ignorance or the idleness of man, if an abundance of the best food shall ever be wanting to ourselves or our children. But we have all come, too, I trust and believe, in no vain and arrogant reliance on human industry or human science for our daily bread, but with hearts grateful towards Heaven for the gracious promise that seed-time and harvest shall never fail, and for the great providential agencies to which we primarily owe whatever of agricultural success we have enjoyed or witnessed.

For, indeed, if there be any thing calculated to inspire a spirit of devout dependence and gratitude in the heart of man, it is the course of nature as contemplated in the operations of the husbandman. There are at least two things which a farmer can never do without, the sun and the shower. No industry, no science, can supply their place. For almost every thing else there may be some sort of substitute contrived. But who can contrive a substitute for a day's sunshine, or even for an hour's rain? What artificial irrigation could prevent or mitigate the consequences of a midsummer's drought? What mechanical arrangement of stoves, what chemical evolution of heat, could stay the ravages of an early frost? How impotent is the arm of man, in presence of agencies like these, blighting in a week, or even nipping in a night, the whole result of a year of toil! We may invent curious implements and marvellous machines to save our own labor; but we can invent nothing which shall dis