382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



als from a pamphlet with the pathetic title, Catalogue of Aban- 

 doned farms in Massachusetts (or New Hampshire or Vermont), 

 we could infer that the issuing of these catalogues was but a 

 rational and normal detail by way of facility in the progression 

 of that great law which moves communities of individuals back 

 and forward, and back and forward again, from one precinct to 

 another, and from one vicinage to another on the map of socie- 

 ties and of States, but always conserving and preserving the 

 equation of prosperity, of tranquillity, and of the general content 

 in and between and around them all. 



Taking the Massachusetts pamphlet as exemplary of them all, 

 it seems to me that the above is the fact. For I find, first, that 

 this abandonment amounts rather to a desire to sell at some fair 

 or " lump " price (and I may add always one somehow approxi- 

 mate to the general value of the land, which certainly is not even 

 as a figure of speech an " abandonment ") ; secondly, I find that 

 the " abandonment " is larger the farther we leave the seacoast 

 and traverse toward the interior countries. The pamphlet shows 

 that 3*45 per cent of the total farm average of the State now 

 offered for sale lies outside of the limits of cities, in the extreme 

 interior, while only about 0'87 per cent of such farm land is situ- 

 ated toward the seacoast. 



In Nantucket and Suffolk Counties — the one an island and the 

 other a peninsular county open on three sides to the seacoast — 

 no such " abandoned " land is offered for sale at all. In Essex 

 County, adjoining Suffolk, where the interior nature of the ter- 

 ritory is a trifle larger than in Suffolk, we have a return of sala- 

 ble land under this pressure, of a trifle less than 0"06 per cent. 

 In Hampshire County, where several settlements are to this day 

 without railroad or telegraphic facilities, containing perhaps but 

 a single town of any size, and where intercommunication is 

 about as rare as an eclipse of the sun, the percentage of land 

 offered for sale is the highest, being 6 "85 per cent ; thus clearly 

 proving, if figures can prove anything, that it is the desire for 

 community, the weariness of isolation, the craving for society, 

 rather than a seeking for the precariousness of new employments, 

 or a failure of the land he has tilled so long, which leads the 

 ruralist to woo forced markets for his farm lands and new indus- 

 tries elsewhere for himself. And not only is this the case, but in 

 a study of this very pamphlet there appears the confirmation of 

 this proposition that normal forces and attractions invariably find 

 their counter-forces and attractions. It appears that as soon as 

 the Massachusetts authorities announced their purpose of issuing 

 this list of " abandoned farms," inquiries concerning these farms 

 were received in considerable numbers. These the Bureau of 

 Agriculture carefully tabulated to the States whence they came, 



