dred dollars, of which one hundred was given by the "Home Missionary Society."

In May, 1830, he married Margaret Tracy, daughter of William Gedney Tracy of Whitesboro.

For twelve years he was pastor, successively, in Salisbury, Herkimer Co.; Butternuts and Fly Creek, Otsego Co.; Winfield, Herkimer Co.; and Holland Patent, Oneida Co. During these twelve years he had only the small salary of four or five hundred dollars a year upon which to support his family.

Though suffering from constant ill health, his professional journal shows that he missed preaching only two or three sabbaths.

Besides preaching and performing the laborious duties of a country minister, he prosecuted various literary labors, (never quite completed however,) read and studied much, lectured to his people on chemistry and other sciences, and kept up his knowledge of agriculture by tilling the ground with his own hands.

The period of his pastoral duties was a time of excitement. The whole country was in a state of ferment. Temperance, anti-slavery, social reform, "new measures" with regard to revivals &c., were dividing churches and arraying christians against each other, while the controversy between the two parties in the Presbyterian church, resulting in the excision of the New School men, was at its height. All these things made the relation between pastor and people exceedingly precarious.

In these controversies he took a decided stand on the side of progress and reform, while the extravagant zeal of some with whom he was at first associated soon left him far behind, and he suffered considerable persecution from many others who thought he was going too far.

He was always active in establishing Sunday schools, Bible classes, temperance and missionary societies.

In 1841 his labors as a pastor terminated.

Soon after, he removed to Utica, and in 1843, started a market garden. Not content with the ordinary routine of sowing and reaping, he tried various experiments in raising peaches, grapes, sweet potatoes and other tender truits and tropical plants, which had never flourished in the cold winters and changeful summers of Oneida county.

Most of his plans proved unsuccessful or too expensive, but he gained many premiums from agricultural societies, and laid up a fund of useful knowledge, which was of great service to him in after years.

The accurate habit of observation, and the close research which had hitherto marked his character, led him to study attentively the habits of plants, and the effect of climate and cultivation upon them; and when the potato began to fail, he soon discovered what he thought to be the true cause and the true remedy.

Relinquishing the cultivation of most other vegetables, he now devoted himself with untiring assiduity, to the restoration of this valuable plant.* Through his brother-in-law, Mr. Henry Tracy, he procured a few potatoes

It is worthy of note that Mr. Goodrich, from constitutional idiosyncracy, was never able to sat a potato, and that he tested the various varieties solely by chemical analysis, taste, and ●bservation of cooking qualities.

from Chili, at an expense of two hundred dollars, and from these he obtained seed, and commenced experiments, not only for the renewal of the potato from the seed, but to infuse new vigor into the plant by seed renewal from tubers grown in South America, where it is indigenous. For long years he experimented, holding the pen in one hand, and the hoe in the other, noting down on the field the most minute peculiarities of each individual plant, and all the circumstances of cultivation, soil and weather, which could influence its growth. He did not, however, give up the duties of his profession, but became Chaplain of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, a position which he held for about nineteen years. In this as in all other positions, he discharged his duties conscientiously and acceptably, and in his death the institution and the public have lost a valuable servant.

His winters were spent in arranging the facts learned during the sum mer into various essays and shorter articles. His communications to the Country Gentleman," and other agricultural papers, to the "Patent Office Reports," and the "Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society," are known to all who read those publications, and the new varieties of potatoes which he introduced, attest the practical value of his labors.

During all this period, he was not idle in the literature of his profession. He not only kept himself well posted, but prepared a work on Pastoral Theology, the manuscript of which has been placed in the hands of one of his ministerial friends for publication.

Constantly increasing illness led him to give up, one after another, the pleasures and active employments of life, and at last obliged him to decide on committing the further progress of his experiments to other hands.

He had already given some new varieties to his friend Charles W. Gleason, Esq., of Holden, Mass., for experimental test before their introduction to the public. He subsequently transferred 130 younger varieties to another friend, D. S. Heffron, Esq., of Utica, and to the writer, 42, now in the fifth year of successful cultivation. Among the latter, the early Goodrich, the Calico, the Gleason, and the Harison, are most promising, while all were free from rot last year.

However, during the early part of the winter of 1864, feeling his strength failing, and advised by his physician that he could not long survive the steady progress of long disease, he devoted himself to the preparation of two valuable papers on the culture and disease of the potato, embodying all the results of his long experience and close observation which he completed a few days before his death, which occurred on the 11th of May.

His various communications to the several agricultural papers from the year 1848 to the day of his death, amount to one hundred and thirty, as far as the writer has been able to trace them. He has also left a large amount of unfinished work, mainly in notes, and observations on vegetable physi ology and pathology, the result of careful and intelligent study, which it is to be regretted he was not spared to complete; and which, it is to be hoped will fall into the hands of some one with the ability and disposition to ren der them available to the world.

His failing health alone prevented his completing a work on vegetablə

pathology, for which he had ample materials, and a subject to which he had long given great attention, and of which he had frequently conversed with the writer.

Mr. Goodrich, as has been stated, was for many years, a man of feeble health. He was however a constant worker, always giving to physical and intellectual labor the total of his strength. He rarely went from home, gave himself no recreation, and never attended places of amusement. He was a studious scholar, an earnest, practical, christian man, and a benefactor of his race in an eminent sense of the word. In all his labors he was unselfish and devoted to the single thought of permanently benefiting mankind. His investigations and experiments on the disease of the potato, and its renewal, were prosecuted for sixteen years, with the enthusiasm of a true lover of science, and with the patient perseverance characteristic of a scholar, and with the sole object of preserving this invaluable esculent to the world. During all this period, his annual expenses in cultivation, considerably exceeded the returns from his sales. The deficits were made good by the premiums awarded him by the State Agricultural Society, from time to time, and when he closed his work, a careful examination of his accounts showed a balance of about fifty dollars as his pecuniary reward. Some of the members of the State Agricultural Society, hearing for the first time of his straightened circumstances, and the unremunerative character of his successful efforts to advance the cause of agriculture, proposed at the annual meeting in February last, a memorial; and subscriptions were taken up amounting to the sum of seven hundred dollars.

This thoughtful and generous act smoothed the latter hours of Mr. Goodrich, and afforded him all the necessary pecuniary support, during the short remnant of his life.

He left four daughters, young ladies dependent on their own exertions. His friend, Mr. R., G., of Mass., in the brief obituary in the "Country Gentleman," already alluded to, justly remarks:

"Republics are, according to proverb, ungrateful. Under a monarchy or despotism, Mr. Goodrich would have received some substantial reward for his untiring efforts to promote the welfare of his race, and his family at his decease would have been placed under the tutelage of the State. But with us private munificence and enterprise usurps the ordinary duties of the State, and it remains to be seen whether his countrymen fully appreciate the lasting benefits conferred upon them by the untiring zeal and perseverance of Mr. Goodrich."

福

benefits of his past perfected labors, and who may soon reap other benefits from more recent experiments now just consummated, will acknowledge a debt of gratitude not only, but also of pecuniary obligation, whose liberal discharge would place his old age and feeble health above pressing pecuniary want.

10. We, therefore, propose the following resolution :

Resolved, That $100 be awarded for his valuable investigation and experience in the propagation of the potato. Adopted.

B. P. JOHNSON, Secretary.

HISTORY OF THE AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS OF NEW YORK FROM 1791 TO 1862.

BY WILLIAM BACON,

The State of New York lies between forty degrees thirty minutes and forty-five degrees north latitude, and between five degrees five minutes east, and two degrees fifty-five minutes west longitude from Washington. Its length from east to west, including Long Island, is four hundred and eight miles; exclusive of that island, it is three hundred and forty miles From north to south its greatest length is three hundred and ten miles.

Its northern boundary is through Lake Ontario, the River St. Lawrence and Canada line; on the east it has Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecti cat; south the Atlantic ocean, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and west Lake Erie and Niagara river. It contains 45,658 square miles, exclusive of lakes, with which it is pleasantly interspersed. Its elevation of surface embraces every altitude from the low water-mark of the ocean to the frowning head of Mount Marcy, nearly five and a half thousand feet above tide-water; with these variations of surface and soil, it necessarily possesses rare facilities for agricultural purposes.

On the first discovery of this State it was covered with a heavy growth of timber, which indicated the depth and fertility of its soil; in common with the early settlers of the other eastern States of America, it appears that great dependence was placed on the capacity of the soil to sustain Itself, even under the influence of severe and incessant cropping. No par ticular value was placed on manure in many districts, while in some por tions, in early days, it was considered a nuisance. We have heard it from the elderly men of a generation now passed away, that in their day they had known manure from adjacent farmers' yards drawn and deposited on the ice of the Hudson, that it might be borne away on the opening of the river in the spring. We cannot, however, believe that this was a very common practice or one of long continuance, and if such a state of wastefulness did exist in the earlier days of our country, the farmers of the State of New York were not the only ones guilty of the practice of throwing away the strength and wealth of the lands; it extended into other states.

More than a century and a half from the commencement of the settlement of the State had passed, before much attention appears to have been given to the improvement of its agriculture.

The earliest account of united effort leading to this improvement, we find in the following proceedings, dating in 1791:

"At a meeting of a respectable number of citizens at the Senate cham ber, in the city of New York, for the purpose of instituting a society for