TABLE Showing Comparative per centage of Abortions in the town of Danube, for the three successive years, 1867, 1868, and 1869. MEMORIAL OF BENJAMIN P. JOHNSON, READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, FEBRUARY 10, 1870. BY MARSENA R. PATRICK, EX-PRESIDENT. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society: It is a wise provision of an All-wise Providence that when we have accomplished the work allotted to us in this world our bodies are laid in the grave "to mix forever with the elements," while our example, our labors and our achievements are left as a legacy to our successors, who, when their life-work is done, "in their turn, shall follow us." As in the little laboratory of the growing plant that rises from the warm bosom of the earth, nutriment is extracted from the gases of the atmosphere, and from the varied elements of the mineral kingdom, as in that laboratory it is transformed from inorganic to organic forms and there fitted, by the vital process, to become the food of animal life, so, in the more thoroughly furnished laboratory of the animal, nutriment is derived, directly or indirectly, from vegetable organisms, which are there assimilated by a vital process of a higher type, and enter into the blood to be developed in the muscles, the fat and the tissues, that, in their turn, eventually become a more concentrated and nutritious food for the human race. Nor does this process characterize the lower creation alone. One man gathers from the book of nature one class of facts, while his fellow gathers another class of facts, and still another class of facts is gathered by a third associate. Each uses his own facts for his own purposes, and then passes away; but whatever each has left, matured in his own laboratory, may enter into the life-growth of some one man who follows them, and be developed, through him, in forms of beauty and of power. In society, everywhere, the leading spirits of to-day labor, each in his own sphere, and gather up the wisdom, the experience, the discoveries of their own times. But the times change. Man, in the [AG.] 10 maturity of life, changes little. As years pass over his head he is not always in sympathy with the spirit of the time present, and his conservatism is slow to change the systems he has organized and carried into successful execution. The active spirits in society, after reaching a controlling influence, on an average, exercise that influence little more than a decade of years; then step aside, or are laid aside, that the representatives of the present may infuse into its councils the spirit and public sentiment of the day that now is. But all the results of the labor, the experience, the failure and the success of those who have once molded and fashioned public opinion, are left as the heritage of each one who shall succeed them, thus enabling their successors, when entering upon their duties, to begin, not where they began, but where they left the work to which their energies had long been given. In our own State Society, the strong, liberal-minded, energetic men who renewed its life and vigor, in 1841, are not its leaders to-day. Those who still live, and at times honor us with their presence, take part in our councils only on extraordinary occasions. Even the men of 1851, and five years later, still, with few exceptions, are not the men who do our routine work to-day, who manage the affairs and guide the policy of the Society. But the leaders of to-day, have grown up in the school of the past, under wise instructors, who were skilled in the signs of their own times, and who shaped their policy to meet the wants of those times most successfully. Let it be your high aim, my fellow members of this Society, upon whom the weight of responsibility for its management now rests, to emulate the noble example and to cultivate the same unselfish, generous spirit that animated Beekman and Delafield and Wadsworth and Faile and King and Rotch and Foster, and their honored compeers who have gone to their rost, for the policy that is born of a spirit like theirs must needs be successful. Of all those worthies who were prominent in the re-organization of this Society in 1841, one individual, alone, has continued his active duties, as one of its officers, until within the last year. Whose form was so well known to the members of this Society? Whose grasp was so cordial? Whose face so radiant with pleasure? Whose presence so venerable-standing up like a patriarch of old to welcome home his scattered sons to their yearly festival? Benjamin Pierce Johnson, the Vice-President of this Society in 1841, was its Corresponding Secretary in 1844, its President 1845, and its working |