AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 383 



kled all over the Commonwealth, displacmg the old, cold, 

 dreary nurseries of New-England manhood, where, fifty years 

 ago, the youthful blood was chilled over unavailing fires, and 

 quickened by the unfurloughed ferule. 



The acres of cultivated land have increased over 31,000 

 from 1865 to 1875 : and although in some of the staple crops 

 the acreage is not as much as it was thirty or forty years 

 ago, yet the yield to the acre of these is much more, which 

 shows in that time an advance of corn from 282 bushels per 

 acre to 35| ; of wheat, from 15| to 20-^ ; barley, from 20 

 to 25 i ; oats, from 21 i to 31^ ; onions, from 313 to 344; pota- 

 toes, from 95 to 108. 



All our grain-crops have largely increased in acreage since 

 1875, — oats, 40 per cent ; barley and buckwheat, 75 per cent ; 

 and corn, about 88 per cent, or 790,000 bushels more than in 

 1875. 



This often-repeated charge, that the agriculture of Massa- 

 chusetts has greatly declined, has not facts to support it. It 

 is foolish, and is derogatory to the whole of the citizens of the 

 Commonwealth, as well as to the farmers. It is uttered by 

 those who are ignorant of the condition of our affairs now, 

 as compared with the past, who have never examined nor 

 compared the statistics of the past and the present, and who 

 are so aptly described by a Latin poet and farmer, — himself, 

 fifty years before our Saviour's birth, born and reared on a 

 farm, and afterwards the owner of the famous " Sabine 

 Farm, "' — that I venture to give his own language : " Dijfi- 

 cilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti " (" discontented, com- 

 plaining, and always praising the times that are past "). 



We have seen, in figures which may not be traversed, what 

 we have lost, and what gained, in our farm productions ; and 

 taking the amounts less in 1875 than in 1845, which show 

 all the loss that could be claimed, the single item of the 

 increase in poultry and eggs, or of tobacco alone, out-counts 

 them all ; nay, more : in the limited returns accessible for 

 1880 it appears, that, since the census of 1875, the horses 

 of the State have increased by 9,892 ; the milch cows, by 

 26,454 ; and the sheep, by 7,000 ; or, according to the valua- 

 tion of 1875 ($2,953,520), about four times the whole loss 

 from 1845 to 1875. During the same period of five years 

 our grain-crops have increased by $950,219. 



