114 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



can honor all the drafts made by successive crops. But in 

 the early husbandry the lands not thus favorably situated 

 were soon exhausted. 



To the traveller in the east, those old seats of empii-e once 

 crowded with a dense agricultural population, now present 

 only scenes of desolation. The vegetation of fields that once 

 poured forth abundance, and when he that sowed reaped a 

 hundred fold, is now reduced to the scanty herbage of the 

 desert. Amidst the desolations of war and feudal oppression 

 slowly the forests of Europe were subdued, and the howling 

 wilderness 'gave place to fruitful fields too often fertilized 

 with human blood. The rude cultivation of early times 

 secured liberal harvests, for the accumulated plant food was 

 readily obtained. When the dowry that the virgin earth 

 brought to the husl^andman was sqandered, with diminished 

 returns the poverty stricken fields reluctantly furnished a 

 meagre supply, which was too often snatched by the warlike 

 retainers of plundering barons from the famished laborers. 



Nor ;3eed we go to the old world to find illustrations of the 

 gradual deterioration of lands improperly cultivated. Thirty- 

 ..seven years ago commissioners were appointed in Massachu- 

 >setts to consider the subject of. agricultural education. In 

 .their report to the Legislature these commissioners say ; 

 "Already the exhaustive process of perpetual cropping has 

 travelled over the once fertile lands of New England, and in 

 its desolating march is now wending its way over the fair 

 iields of New York, Ohio, and the far West. Under the in- 

 fluence of this s3\stem'of cultivation the crops of wheat in 

 ,these States have receded from an average of twenty-two 

 bushels to fourteen bushels an acre, or even less. And the 

 same remarks will apply to other crops in like ratio of pro- 

 .duction. Do our farmers realize that the present system of 

 impoverishing our lands will sooner or later end in barren- 

 jiess? And if the present population may rightfully exhaust 

 one-third part of the arable lands of the United States of 

 their natural fertility, the population that will be here before 

 the close of the present century will long before that period 



