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It seems to the Committee that a simple building, about forty feet wide, and of such length as is required, with a driveway from one end to the other, is the most convenient design yet adopted. With this plan, the cattle may be furnished with roomy stalls, and they may stand near the hay. Room is furnished for closets, stables, &c., in convenient localities. The space over the drive-way can be occupied with a moveable scaffold if desired. The building can easily be aired; and the frame of such a building can be constructed with ease and economy. Under such a building the cellar can be properly arranged so as to accommodate the design of the room above, whether it be for cattle or horses, or for the easy storing of roots; a cellar being, in the minds of the Committee, as important to a well-ordered barn as to a house.

These views governed the Committee in their choice of a plan for the building. They proposed to have a cellar easy of access for teams; convenient for making manure; and provided with a root cellar, into which roots can be tipped from the cart through a trap-door in the passage-way of the barn, and the labor of carrying in baskets be thus avoided. They endeavored to divide the space in the barn into comfortable arrangements for the cattle and horses, and convenient places for the hay, straw, &c. And they endeavored, also, to erect a building which would be pleasing to the eye.

The sketch on page 160, drawn by Mr. Emmerton, of the firm of Foster & Emmerton, architects, Salem, Mass., will give an idea of the appearance of the building.

The cellar, which was built by N. W. Brown, the tenant of the farm, extends under the entire building. It has a wide opening under the front long side of the barn, and a narrow one in the rear north-west corner, for the convenience of the fields lying in that direction. It is seven and a half feet in depth; has a substantial wall; and a small portion of it in the south-west corner is set apart for a root cellar.

The stalls for the horses are located in the two bands on the left of the front doors. They are provided with a passage

way in front, three and one-half feet wide into which the moveable feed-boxes, hereafter illustrated, may swing, and where grain chests can be kept. In the upper part of this pessage-way are the rears of the hay racks.

The stalls themselves are provided with racks flush with the front wall, as shown in the accompanying sketch, and with moveable boxes, as also shown. The floors are laid with two inch plank, sawed in strips four inches wide, and separated three-fourths of an inch, for drainage of the water.

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The cattle are tied with the common stancheon, as the safest and most convenient method. The flooring under the cattle is laid crosswise of the barn; and for the oxen it is laid open as for the horses. A manure gutter, thirteen inches wide, is provided with long trap-doors, hung on hinges. The feeding space in front of the cattle is divided by plank partitions to

keep the heads of the cattle separate; the floor of the space is raised three inches from the barn floor; and in front of the spaces is a plank eight inches wide, hung at the bottom so as to fall off an inch when let down, in order to avoid clogging, and shutting in between the posts, so as to prevent the food of the cattle from being scattered over the floor. A wooden button on the posts holds each end of this plank in place. This furnishes an easy mode of cleaning the feed boxes. The drawing on page 164, by Mr. Emmerton, gives a correct view of the arrangement-the most convenient the Committee could devise.

The working plans of the frame &c. have been omitted as occupying too much room.

The contract for building was made on the 6th of March, 1862, with Mr. John H. Potter of Topsfield, under the accompanying specifications and agreement :

SPECIFICATIONS FOR A BARN ON THE TREADWELL FARM IN

TOPSFIELD, FOR THE ESSEX AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

Size of Barn.-60 feet in length by 40 feet in width; with 17 feet post.

Roof.-Ten inches over one-third pitch.

Projection.-Coving to project at eves and ends eighteen inches, as per plan annexed.

Framing. The timber and joists of the frame to be as per memorandum annexed, including quality and size; to be framed in five bays of twelve feet each; the floor joists in the lower floor to be framed as per plan; the studding to be framed in not more than twenty inches from center; the small rafters to be framed in not more than twenty-two inches from center; the frame to be pinned with white oak pins not less than one inch in size; and the scaffold girths to have two pins to each tenant, and to be joined into the posts at the lower corner three-quarters of an inch; the scaffold joists to be framed in not more than twenty inches from the center; the scaffold enter-ties to be fastened with iron joint-bolts to the inner and outer posts; ex

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