well worth it, from a breeder's standpoint. Of course I was laughed at, but the time soon came for me to smile. I received most of the awards for excellence at the last County Fair held in Marion County, and at the first State Fair, held on the banks of the Clackamas in 1861, selling the first lamb there for $100.00, and in succeeding years I received, I think, more than 400 awards at the State Fairs on sheep and wool. But always, the gain to me personally was beyond the money value of my flock or my care of it. My study of the value of the sheep and wool interests to the nation being of such service to a great public interest that when the Secretary of Agriculture wanted a man to report to his office the condition of sheep husbandry, the Oregon delegation went in a body to him and asked for my appointment; and I thus became the representative of that interest from the Pacific Coast States and Territories in the National Report on the Sheep of the United States, in 1892, a book of 1,000 pages from the Department of Agriculture.
I still maintained my interest in fruit growing when embarking in sheep breeding as a special line; I farmed, however, mainly for my stock, though paying close attention to the best grains and grasses for my locality. In 1853 the first Farmers' Club in Oregon was organized at my residence. Four years later I was a member of the first County Agricultural Society formed in Marion County and the State. In 1860, the attempt to form a State Agricultural Society began at Portland; but it being desirable to unite all interests of the soil, and most members of the Oregon Pomological Society being in Marion County, the friends of the larger plan met at Salem. I had a somewhat boyish bashfulness at such consultations. While the others (and they were not many, there rarely are when public-spirited work is to be done) were earnestly discussing plans for the holding of the first State Fair, and where it should be held, I wrote off an imitation of Robert Burns' inviting farmers to their duty as citizens, which I had composed while at work in the harvest field of my friend and neighbor, Daniel Clark, whom I had joined in the purchase of
