NEW ENGLAND FARMING. 13 



farmers who occup}'^ this locality, and have passed from one 

 crop to another according to the demands of the markets and 

 the competition they are to meet with. That this crop should 

 have increased is as natural as that woollen and cotton mills 

 should have multiplied on all our streams. So, too, of our 

 market-jxardenino; in the neighborhood of our cities and large 

 towns. Wherever a demand has been created the supply has 

 followed. And whether it be the products of the dairy or of 

 the orchard or of the market-garden or of the vineyard, 

 profit has always attended their judicious production. ' No 

 farm fortunately situated as regards markets, in New Eng- 

 land, has yet been deserted, nor has land thus situated de- 

 creased in value ; on the contrary, the rise in the value of such 

 lands for farming purposes alone has been enormous. 



It is not difiicult, moreover, to account for the decrease of 

 certain crops which would seem, at first glance, to be stimu- 

 lated by the state of things to which I have referred. Pota- 

 toes, for instance, which were formerly raised in large quan- 

 tities, and easily raised, too, throughout all the sparsely set- 

 tled portions of New England, for the manufacture of starch 

 and as food for cattle, are now raised with much difficulty 

 almost solely as food for man. N^ farmer can atford to raise 

 potatoes at the present reduced amount of the crop on 

 account of disease, if for no other reason, for the cheaper 

 purposes of manufacture or cattle-feeding. The increasing 

 demand for milk in the market has drawn a large portion of 

 this commodity away from the production of butter and 

 cheese ; and as the amount of the latter diminishes, the value 

 of the former is largely increased. That hay also should have 

 fallen off in quantity, during the severe droughts and hard 

 winters of the last four or five years, is not surprising, especi- 

 ally when you add to these causes the removal of abandoned 

 farms from the hay-producing area of the country. 



That the same ingenuity that is now applied to lands near 

 a market will one day be applied to those more remote, and 

 with less ready means of communication, I have no doubt. 

 I have often urged an investigation into the method by which 

 the grass-lands of New England, now lying idle, could be 

 brought into the production of hay by the use of some effect- 

 ive fertilizer, and by some easy mode of cultivation. The 



