854 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



hold such a thing as this into the ground. I wonder if there 

 are not a few of them still in use hereabouts. Perhaps they 

 have passed away ; but if they liave, I venture to say there are 

 some other things still in practice in this county, just as far 

 behind this improving age as the oldest and awkwardest plough 

 ever used in Massachusetts. 



I think I see a man that looks incredulous. Let me ask him 

 if he hills his corn. Oh yes, of course. Then you had better 

 discard the improved plough, the reaper, the thresher, and win- 

 nowing machine, and go back to first principles in all things, as 

 well as one. Did you ever think why you hilled your corn ? 

 I will tell you. Simply because your ancestor saw the Lidians 

 cultivate their corn tbat way, and followed the Indian fashion, 

 and you have followed your grandfather. It never entered 

 your mind why. The Indian did it because he never ploughed 

 the ground, but scraped together a little mound of loose earth 

 to support the stalks ; and you, without a thought, have done 

 the same. In that point of improvement you only rank with a 

 Pequot squaw. You are as hard to believe that corn will grow 

 better upon deep-ploughed land, with level culture, as the other 

 man was that corn stalks could grow eighteen feet high, and 

 bear the ears far above his reach. Yet it is true. You only 

 want ocular demonstration to prove that you are as unimprov- 

 ing as the Indian, and you will correct this error. 



There is another error that is very common in New England, 

 though I don't know how far it is so in this county ; and that 

 is, land once in grass, always in grass. I don't know but my 

 grandfather would have gone into fits, if he had seen his son 

 breaking up the sod of his ancient meadow. I am certain that 

 I have seen land mowed for less than half a ton to the acre, 

 that had been mowed for fifty years in succession. 



How well do I remember the farm that I toiled on when a 

 boy. Within forty rods of the barnyard there was a swamp 

 and pond, easily drained, that contained more manure than 

 would accumulate in the yard in forty years ; for there it had 

 been accumulating for forty centuries. On that farm lived a 

 man over eighty years old, who could not remember when some 

 of the grass lots were ploughed. The same land was ploughed 

 and planted, or sowed to small grain, year after year, and only 

 manured when planted in corn, and then only half as much as 



