EARLY DAYS OF FARMING. 321 



ness were its extensive cultivation at the West, and the introduc- 

 tion of the more profitable culture of tobacco which began 

 about 1850, and has been continually increasing to the present 

 time. In 1855 the towns of Hadley, South Hadley, Amherst 

 and Granby, cultivated sixty-eight acres of this plant, but in 

 1865 its growth had extended to all the ten towns named, and 

 they had nine hundred and forty-three acres in tobacco. It is 

 the universal opinion of that community that its growth has 

 increased since that time, but the statistics of 1870 give us but 

 nine hundred and twenty acres devoted to its cultivation. 



In selecting farm lands in this section, the original settlers 

 took first the highlands which were heavily wooded and had a 

 dry soil, and then dry alluvial and the lighter class of sandy 

 loams. The former after yielding a few crops of the smaller 

 grains by indifferent cultivation, were devoted almost exclu- 

 sively to grazing, and the latter from father to son were kept 

 under cultivation to grain with partial rest from time to time by 

 the growth of grass. For more than a hundred years these were 

 the only kinds of soil used, and generally without any system- 

 atic rotation of crops, or any effective plan for preserving its fer- 

 tility. When it materially deteriorated new resources were 

 supplied by clearing and using forest lands, but only in modern 

 times has there been any attempt to bring to the wants of hus- 

 bandry the low, wet lands where are accumulated choice ele- 

 ments of fertility gathered from the adjacent country. The 

 general system of cultivation pursued has gradually deteriorated 

 the producing power of the soil. Some whole farms, and a very 

 few acres on many farms having received special attention still 

 yield crops as of yore, but as a rule Indian corn decreased from 

 sixty to twenty-seven bushels per acre ; rye from thirty-five 

 to nine ; wheat, which produced from thirty to forty bushels, is 

 not grown except as a rare and pet crop. Hay fell from two 

 to one ton per acre, and pasture which once carried a cow to 

 two acres, required five acres to the cow, or it'ceased to produce 

 grass at all. Although a portion of this territory, which at its 

 first settlement was cleared land and was afterwards permitted to 

 produce forest, yet as a general rule the forest lands have been 

 simply devastated. For more than a century the wood had little 

 or no value, and it was swept away to make farms, or to get new 

 rich land when the old failed, but in modern times the process 



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