8 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



drained, and the exliansted uplands bore but scanty crops or 

 were abandoned to weeds, under the mistaken idea of fallow- 

 rests. Barns were moved (tradition says) to get them away 

 from manure heaps considered an incumbrance ; wood ashes 

 were sold at a song, and there was a stagnant pool beneath the 

 sink spout. The horses and cattle were so badly housed and 

 fed during the winter, that they cast but faint shadows in the 

 spring, Avhile the gardens were mere vegetable patches, with a 

 few straggling marigolds, roses and lilacs, contending for the 

 mastery along the wall, with milkweed, Roman wormwood and 

 burdock. A bulbous root, cultivated on the window sill in a 

 cracked earthen bean-pot, was deemed an aristocratical luxury. 

 Tliis was not imnoticed by the " fathers of the country." 

 Jefferson experimented on his farm at Monticello,* and Adams 

 on his farm at Quincy. Washington's farm was his delight, 

 and amid all the embarrassments attending the establishment of 

 the ncAV system of government, he found leisure to hold an 

 interesting and voluminoiis correspondence upon husbandry, 

 with Sir John Sinclair. Luckily for Great Britain, Sir John 

 succeeded in establishing an Agricultural Board in that king- 

 dom, but no action has yet been taken upon Washington's first 

 recommendation to Congress urging the " advancement of agri- 

 culture." This he evidently considered the most important 

 matter, and — last of all — he recommended " facilitating the 

 intercourse between different parts of the country." Every 

 one of his successors down to the present incumbent, has in 

 turn advised the " advance of agriculture," — yet Congress has 

 done nothing on the sul)ject except to obtain seeds for the 

 member's individual distribution to political friends. Of the 

 five million three hundred and seventy-one thousand eight 

 hundred and seventy-six free male citizens over fifteen years of 

 age, who inhabited this Republic in 1850, (when the last census 

 was taken,) two millions four hundred thousand five hundred 

 and eighty-three were engaged in agriculture ; yet I regret to 

 state that the committees on agriculture, both of the Senate 



* Among other interesting letters on agriculture by President Jefferson, is 

 one to the Hon. Tristam Dalton, who then carried on the Spring Hill Farm in 

 West Newbury, now owned by Doctor Robinson. After speaking of root 

 crops, he describes and recommends the " side-hill plough," invented by his 

 son-in-law, Col. J. M. Randolph. 



