as President. But his interest in the management of the Society did not cease with that event. By virtue of the office of President he had been Chairman of the Executive Committee from 1841 to 1848, and he continued to be a member, either as an Ex-President or by election, until his death, and no one was more constant and punctual in attending its meetings than he. He was a member of the Committee on Flowers in 1837 and 1838; a member of the Committee on the Library in 1838, 1839, and 1840, and Chairman in 1842; Chairman of the Committee on the Synonymes of Fruits from 1844 to 1865; Chairman of the Finance Committee from 1849 to 1858, and with the exception of one year a member from that time until 1866. He was also frequently appointed on important special committees. By his will he bequeathed to the Society, as a fund to perpetuate his memory, the sum of one thousand dollars; the income of which is to be awarded in prizes for the improvement of the Pear and the Grape.

Mr. Wilder's interest in agriculture and labors to promote its improvement were hardly less than those in horticulture. The first organized effort in which he joined in this behalf was on the first Saturday in April, 1840, when several gentlemen who felt that nothing is so conducive to right thinking as good eating and drinking met at the Exchange Coffee House to form a club to dine together monthly for conversation and the interchange of opinions relating mainly to agriculture. This association was named the Massachusetts Agricultural Club, and its meetings have been held regularly until the present time. The first President was Cheever Newhall, who continued in that position until his death in 1878, when he was succeeded by Mr. Wilder, whose incumbency also was terminated only with his life. It was around this social board that many of the projects for the advancement of agriculture in which Mr. Wilder took a leading part were discussed and brought into shape. The first of these was the Norfolk Agricultural Society, formed in February, 1849, when he was chosen President. In his first address before this Society he urged the importance of agricultural education the first general effort for the promotion of this interest in our country. Governor Briggs, Lieutenant Governor Reed, Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop, Ex-Governor Lincoln of Massachusetts, Ex-Governor Hill of New Hampshire, Charles Francis Adams, Josiah Quincy, Sr., Josiah Quincy, Jr., Gen. H. A. S.

Dearborn, Horace Mann, and many others of national reputation were among his hearers. This effort ultimately bore fruit in the Massachusetts Agricultural College. He was President of this Society for twenty years and on his retirement was constituted Honorary President in acknowledgment of his services. In February, 1886, Henry O. Hildreth, for many years Secretary of the Norfolk Agricultural Society, presented a complete set of the "Transactions" of that Society to the library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, in memory of Mr. Wilder's twenty years' presidency.

The next of Mr. Wilder's plans for the promotion of agriculriculture was the establishment of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. A large meeting of delegates was held in response to an invitation from him as President of the Norfolk Agricultural Society and from other agricultural societies in the State; the Massachusetts Central Board of Agriculture was organized; he was elected President, and retained that office until the Board of Agriculture became a department of the State government. Up to the time of his death he was the senior member of the Board.

In 1852, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, he prepared a circular calling a national convention of agriculturists at Washington. A meeting was held in that city on the 24th of June, 1852, in which twenty-three States were represented by one hundred and fifty delegates. The United States Agricultural Society was organized, and Mr. Wilder was chosen President. He held this office for six years, and on his resignation a silver tea service of the value of two hundred and fifty dollars was presented to him. At the next annual meeting the large gold medal of honor, valued at one hundred and fifty dollars, and bearing the inscription, "Awarded to the Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, Founder, First President, and Constant Patron," was unanimously conferred upon him. This medal he bequeathed to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Much was done by the United States Agricultural Society through its meetings, publications, and exhibitions of horses and other live stock, implements, and farm products to improve the agriculture of our country, until the approach of the civil war put an end to its operations.

In 1858, as a result of Mr. Wilder's efforts in behalf of agricultural education, the Massachusetts School of Agriculture was incorporated, and he was elected President. It was intended to

locate the school at Springfield; but as Congress soon afterwards granted land to each State for an agricultural college the necessity for the school was obviated. In 1863 the Massachusetts Agricultural College was incorporated, and he was named as its first trustee. In 1871 he delivered the address on the graduation of the first class from that institution, and at the Commencement in 1878 he had the honor of conferring the degree of Bachelor of Science on twenty young gentlemen who were also its graduates.

Mr. Wilder's labors for the good of the community were not confined to his favorite pursuits of agriculture and horticulture. In 1859 he presided at the first public meeting in relation to the collocation of several scientific institutions on the Back Bay lands, where the splendid edifices of the Boston Society of Natural History and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now stand. Of the latter institution he was one of the founders, a Vice-President, and Chairman of its Society of Arts.

In January, 1868, he was unanimously elected to the office of President of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, made vacant by the death of Ex-Governor John A. Andrew ; which he held until the time of his own death. At each annual meeting he delivered an appropriate address. In his first address he urged the importance of procuring a suitable building for the Society, and in 1870 a Committee, of which he was Chairman, was appointed to carry out this object. Mr. Wilder devoted more than three months to the work of soliciting funds for this purpose, and raised more than forty-four thousand dollars, with which the building No. 18 Somerset street was purchased and adapted to the purposes of the Society. A little later he raised a fund the income of which is devoted to paying the librarian, and a year or two before his death a further sum for enlarging the building, making a total of nearly eighty-four thousand dollars, secured by him for promoting the objects of the Society.

Mr. Wilder was one of the twelve representative men selected to receive the Prince of Wales at the banquet given in his honor on the occasion of his visit to Boston in 1860. He was also one of the United States Commissioners to the Universal Exposition at Paris in 1867, where he was appointed Chairman of the Committee on Horticulture and the Cultivation and Products of the Vine. While in Europe he visited many of the prominent horticulturists in England, France, and Belgium whom he had previ

ously known by correspondence; also examining the most noted gardens, and inquiring into the state of horticulture. From Europe he hastened home to preside at the meeting of the American Pomological Society at St. Louis, Missouri. Early in 1869, with a few horticultural friends he made a tour in the South in the hope of meeting the members of the Pomological Society in some of the Southern States whom he had not seen since the beginning of the civil war, but also with the view of ascertaining the resources of that part of our country and the state of horticulture there. An account of this tour was published by him in "Tilton's Journal of Horticulture." In 1870 with a larger party he made a journey to California, chiefly to examine the orchards, vineyards, and gardens, as well as the more important native trees and plants of that State. The results of the observations of these tourists were published in the "Rural New Yorker " and in Tilton's Journal of Horticulture." They were also embodied in a lecture by Mr. Wilder which he delivered before several audiences.

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In politics Mr. Wilder took comparatively little interest. Multitudes of other men stood ready to serve the State politically, but few could serve it as he has done in his chosen walks of usefulness. In 1839 he was induced to serve as a representative in the Legislature for the town of Dorchester during a single term. Ten years afterward he was elected a member of Governor Briggs's Council, and in the year following a member and also President of the State Senate, where he was active in promoting the cause of agricultural education. Once he stood on the brink of a public career, that would have robbed us of many a gracious service and would surely have invaded the order and peacefulness of his life. Whatever ambition he may have had for political advancement, in later years he felt that it was better that it had not been gratified, for he had served his fellow men more effectually and enjoyed life more than if it had been.

The military title of Mr. Wilder was due to his natural proclivity to military pursuits-probably a hereditary tendency. The carliest ancestor to whom the family has been traced was Nicholas Wilder, a chieftain in the army of the Earl of Richmond who fought and won the battle of Bosworth in 1485. Mr. Wilder's ancestors rendered meritorious services to their country in the Indian wars, in the Revolution, and in Shays's insurrection. The warm

blood and courageous daring of the old Puritan warriors, exhibited in many sanguinary encounters with dusky and lighter colored foes of the forest and sea-coast, had been transmitted to him. Opportunities for the display of hereditary qualities in actual warfare were wanting, but the pomp of preparation supplied the lack. At an early age he took a keen interest in military affairs, at sixteen was enrolled in the militia of New Hampshire, and at twenty-one was commissioned as Adjutant. He organized and equipped the Rindge Light Infantry, and was chosen its Captain. At twenty-five he was elected Lieutenant Colonel and at twentysix was commissioned as Colonel of the Twelfth regiment. Soon after his removal to Boston he joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company; and, after having been nominated four times. and as frequently declining the honor, in 1857 he accepted the command.

This artillery corps is the only offspring of the Royal Artillery Company of London, founded in 1537 and commanded by the various sovereigns of England. Colonel Wilder entered into an interesting correspondence with Prince Albert, then in command, sending to him a copy of the history of the Boston Company, and receiving in return an elegant copy of Highmore's History of the Royal Artillery Company. At the two hundred and nineteenth anniversary, in 1857, Prince Albert was, on motion of Colonel Wilder, elected a special honorary member, and at the anniversary in 1878 the present Commander of the corps, the Prince of Wales, was, at the instance of Colonel Wilder, made a special honorary member as his father had been, twenty-one years before.

On the 7th of November, 1849, a festival of the Sons of New Hampshire was celebrated at Boston. The Hon. Daniel Webster presided and Mr. Wilder was Vice-President. The association again met on the 29th of October, 1852, to attend the funeral of Mr. Webster. On this occasion the Legislature and other citizens of New Hampshire were received at the Lowell depot and addressed by Mr. Wilder in behalf of the sons of that State resident in Boston. The "Sons" celebrated their second festival November 2, 1853. Mr. Wilder occupied the chair as President and delivered one of his most able and eloquent addresses. They assembled again June 20, 1861, to receive and welcome the New Hampshire regiment of volunteers; and escorted them to Music Hall, where Mr. Wilder addressed them in a patriotic speech appropriate to their departure for the field of battle.