Board, and their recommendation of it as adapted for use in the schools of the Commonwealth. I trust it will serve to help increase an intelligent interest in farming, and develop the productiveness of this fundamental pursuit of industry.

An undue proportion of the soil of our Commonwealth is unused for any profitable purpose. This is in part owing to following the local traditions, instead of studying the secrets of nature, and extracting her truth. Much land now wasted might be used for the growth of wood and timber, yielding a crop once in twenty or thirty years, without much labor in its care; and farms now of little profit might become profitable by the proper methods of adaptation, and the skill to diversify their cultivation. Fruits, vines, and various branches of gardening, may be largely cultivated by those whose main pursuits are in-doors and sedentary. And might not the study of nature awaken a taste for horticulture, and the like, in our boys and girls at school, the results of which will be seen, not alone in the larger business of regular farming, but in a thousand humbler ways, adorning the village, the wayside, and the cottage home with beauty, giving freshness to many jaded minds, besides increase of health, industry, and wealth?

Flowage.

The subject of flowing our low lands and meadows under the operation of the "Mill Act," has also

engaged the attention of the Board of Agriculture. Rights already acquired thereunder are not subject to disturbance by its modification, or repeal, but in the belief that the Act has long outlived its usefulness, I respectfully recommend its consideration to the Legislature.

The tendency of thrift, economy, and sound policy is towards general and systematic drainage, not towards the drowning of the most valuable lands. Rude and poor farming is the usual lot of pioneers. It was true of those of New England. They gradually moved down from the more barren hill-tops to the meadows and richer lands, where capital and labor, wisely expended, are at first absolutely needed, but where the ultimate return is large and ample.

In this connection I desire also to call the attention of the Legislature to a measure of justice and public utility which will restore to cultivation many acres of the richest and most productive lands in the State. There are in nearly every section of the Commonwealth, ancient mill-privileges under which the right exists, and has existed since the first settlement of the country, to flow back upon the lands adjacent to the streams which supply them. Many of these privileges are neglected, and have been unused for years, but still the dams remain, rendering all attempts to redeem for cultivation, the lands above, of no avail. There should certainly be some limit to the period when exclusive rights, originally conferred upon individuals for the

common good, and which, under the changed circumstances of the present time, serve only as instrumentalities of oppression, and to retard the development of enterprise in the cultivation of the soil, should again revert to those proprietors of lands by whom they were originally yielded. Whether provision should not be made by statute limitation as to the time when all such unused and neglected mill-privileges should become invalid, is worthy of your consideration.

Harris on Insects Injurious to Vegetation. The third edition of Harris on Insects Injurious to Vegetation, published under a Resolve of the year 1859, chapter 93, has just been completed. This edition of a work, of which the first was published in the year 1841, has been enlarged by suitable additions and illustrations, and is nearly ready for delivery. Extensive collections of insects were made, in order to have fresh specimens for use in making the drawings, which were supervised by Professor Agassiz by comparison with the original specimens before engraving.

This is a work of great beauty and careful learning, and is fitted for much usefulness, if properly and wisely distributed. I ask the attention of the Legislature to that part of the Resolve of 1859, which provides for a partial distribution. The whole subject is in the control of the present Legislature, and

I venture to suggest that a work, the actual cost of which to the State is nearly three dollars a copy, and which will not be reproduced for another twenty years to come, should be given away only to those by whom it is likely to be prized for its scientific uses.

The Resolve provides for giving a copy to each member and reporter of the Legislature of 1859, by which it was passed. But this is a subject open to the revision of the present General Court.

Distribution of State Documents.

In this connection I suggest the expediency of providing by law a definite and complete system of distribution of public documents, prescribing in one statute the persons to whom each document regularly printed by the State shall be given, and the number of such documents which such persons shall receive. The present system is very imperfect and obscure, depending in great part upon ancient Resolves of the Legislature, scattered through fifty years of legislation, and has come practically to depend in a considerable degree upon the personal discretion of the officers having such documents in charge.

Colonial Records and Provincial Laws.

The twelfth volume of Records of the Colony of New Plymouth has been issued during the present year, forming the tenth bound volume of the series.

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Sufficient material for two more volumes has been transcribed, and is ready for the printer, and I am informed that seven volumes in addition to these two, will complete the series, and that more or less progress has been made upon them all. The historical importance of ensuring the preservation of these records was well stated by the committee of the Legislature of 1855, upon whose recommendation the publication of them was commenced; and of even superior importance in every point of view, is the preservation by publication, of the Provincial Statutes of Massachusetts covering a period of nearly a century, from 1691 to 1780, the only complete collection of which in existence has been gathered in one private library in the Commonwealth, and is subject to all the risks of loss, destruction, and dispersion, to which private property is necessarily liable. In my Inaugural Address to the General Court of 1861, I had the honor earnestly to recommend the printing of these statutes, and I desire earnestly to repeat that recommendation.

Reform in Pay and Work of State Employees. Observation during the past year has satisfied me that there exists great inequality between many of the servants of the State,-and particularly among the clerks in the various Departments,-in respect to pay and work. There are some whose hours of necessary labor have been twice those of others, and whose work