HOW TO DOUBLE THE CROP. 123 



feeble stand of grass, — Timothy and red-top, — which was 

 cut, and then the field pastured to death all the fall. There 

 was no economy, no profit, no lasting improvement of the 

 land, in such a system as that. And yet you know — every 

 farmer who was born and raised on a farm forty or fifty 

 years ago knows — perfectly well, that such was the almost 

 universal practice. What wonder that our grass-lands were 

 run out until an average hay-crop was less than a ton to 

 the acre ! 



I say we have made some progress, some improvement, 

 since then, — a decided improvement. The popular notions 

 in regard to the comparative value of the grass and hay 

 crop, and the hoed or cultivated crops, have considerably 

 changed in the last twenty years ; so that, from having been 

 accustomed to raise less than a ton to the acre, we are now 

 raising something over a ton ; and we must take hold and 

 see if we cannot double it. How are we going to do it ? 



In the first place, I should say, by a greatly improved 

 tillage of our lands and by under-draining. On the first 

 point, the matter of tillage, I shall have something to say 

 hereafter. As to the matter of under-draining, it has been 

 very thoroughly discussed in my Report for 1871, and in 

 several other Reports, by Col. Waring and others, who have 

 gone very minutely into the question of how it should be 

 done, the profits of it, &c. ; so that I need not stop to dwell 

 upon that point here. 



I should say, in the second place, by a greater quantity, 

 and especially a greater variety, of grass-seed in our mixtures. 

 You know our forefathers, the Pilgrims and Puritans, sowed 

 no grass-seed whatever. They relied upon the spontaneous 

 productions of the soil, upon the salt-marshes lying along the 

 seashore, or upon the bogs, swamps, or swales farther in- 

 land ; and you know, if you recollect the early history of 

 these colonies, that the towns along the seashore — Plymouth, 

 Duxbury with its large extent of salt-marshes, Marshfield 

 with its two thousand acres or more of open salt-marsh, Hing- 

 ham, Charlestown at that time abundantly supplied with 

 salt-marshes, Lynn, Ipswich, Newbury, all shore-towns — 

 were settled among the first, because they afforded extensive 

 facilities for the use of the natural productions of the salt- 

 marshes. 



