MARTHA'S VINEYARD. 393 



temptation to follow the sea is so strong, that many leave, 

 preferring to plough the ocean than to continue the same- 

 named operation on the unresponding sands of the Cape. 



The Vineyard, while suffering with the other two counties, 

 is peculiar, as showing less change in its population than any 

 other county in the State, probably due much to this control- 

 ling love of their home, — this nostalgia which will not admit 

 a permanent expatriation, 



Nantucket has not so large a population now as she had in 

 1790. She culminated in 1845, and has been waning ever 

 since. Barnstable has 4,000 less than she had twenty years 

 ago ; and the Vineyard has increased but a thousand over 

 the 3,265 she had a hundred years ago. For the first fifty 

 years, with occasional set-backs, she added but about five 

 hundred inhabitants, and has only increased her population 

 the other five hundred since 1840, and that increase has been 

 in Edgartown and Tisbury. 



Dukes County, including Gosnold, according to our State 

 census, the only, one giving opportunity for comparison, 

 contains 33,945 acres of farming lands, in 371 farms ; having 

 4,893 acres of cultivated land, appraised at $30.12 per acre ; 

 18,000 acres of pasture or unimproved land at $9.34; 9,200 

 acres of woodland at $12.42, and 1,858 acres of unimprov- 

 able at $1.43 per acre. 



On these 371 farms are 978 buildings, or a little less than 

 three buildings to each farm ; in that respect a little better 

 than the average of the State. 



The average value of all the buildings on each farm in 

 the State, of which there are two and two-thirds, is about 

 $1,482 ; the average value of all the buildings on each farm 

 in Dukes County is about %Q>Qfi. The value of the individual 

 buildings on each farm in the State is less than $560 each ; 

 in Dukes County each building on every farm averges $253. 



The domestic animals on each farm in the State are valued 

 at about $388 ; those on the Vineyard farms at about $260. 



But the item showing their greatest deficiency and a 

 neglect of good farming, and consequently a loss of prod- 

 ucts and of profits, is that of agricultural implements and 

 machinery. This not only shows in figures, but was dis- 

 cernible at the fair and in the fields, and is a matter of com- 



