The Alfred Society desired a year or two ago to remove to a milder climate; they offered their entire property for $100,000, but found no purchaser at the price, and determined to remain. Their buildings are in excellent order; and they are prosperous, having, besides the income from their different industries, a fund at interest. They have never had any defalcation or loss from unfaithful agents or trustees, and they have no debt. I was told that the first circular saw ever made in the United States was invented by a Shaker at Alfred. _New Gloucester_. The New Gloucester Society lies in Cumberland County, about twenty-five miles northwest of Portland. It consists of two families, having together about seventy members, of whom one third are men. In 1823 it had three families, the third being gathered in 1820, and broken up in 1831. The society had in 1823 one hundred and fifty members. It was "gathered" in 1794; its members are now all Americans except two, who are Scotch. Among them are persons who were farmers, merchants, printers, wool-weavers, and Some mechanics. The Church Family lives in a valley, the Gathering Family on a high ridge, about a mile off, and overlooking an extensive tract of country. The society has two thousand acres of land, and owns a saw-mill, grist-mill, and a very complete machine shop. The people raise garden seeds, make brooms, dry measures, wire sieves, and the old-fashioned spinning-wheel, which, it seems, is still used in Maine and New Hampshire by country-women to make stocking yarn. But its most profitable industry is the manufacture of oak staves for molasses hogsheads, which are exported to the West Indies. One of the elders of this society, Hewitt Chandler, a man of uncommon mechanical ingenuity, and the inventor of a mowing-machine which was made here for some years, has contrived a way of bending staves without setting them up in the cask, which saves much time and labor, and makes this part of their business additionally profitable. They made last year also a thousand dollars' worth of pickles; and the women make fancy articles in their spare time. They employ from fifteen to twenty laborers in their mills and other works, most of whom are boarded and lodged on the place. The meeting-house at this place was built in 1794, and the dwelling of the Church Family in the following year. Both are of wood, are still in good order, and have never been re-shingled. The second family at this place was "gathered" in 1808, at Gorham, in Maine, and removed to its present location in 1819. It had then twenty brethren and thirty-two sisters; and has now only twenty members in all.