322 Percy Wells Bidwell 



furnish a market.^ These fields were separated originally by rail 

 fences or stone walls. In places where timber was beginning to 

 be scarce the latter material was most generally used. When the 

 farmer and his sons piled up these monuments of laborious toil they 

 were accomplishing a double purpose, not only marking off the boun- 

 daries of their fields, but ridding their land of a great hindrance to 

 cultivation as well. 



The Importance of Indian Corn. 



Indian corn and rye were the staple grains cultivated on every 

 inland farm. The first might have been called the cornerstone of 

 New England agriculture. Next to grass its yield was more valu- 

 able than that of any other crop. Dickinson says of this crop: 

 "Indian corn may justly be considered as our principal grain, and 

 the most valuable in the whole circle of husbandry. Its increase, 

 compared with that of any other grain, is in a greater degree inde- 

 pendent of the season, and governed more by the attention and care 

 of the cultivator. It is mixed in the proportion of one-third, with 

 rye, and constitutes the common bread of the inhabitants. The 

 beef, pork, and poultry, fattened with it, are greatly superior to such 

 as are fed on any other grain. Besides the crop, the average of 

 which is about twenty-eight bushels per acre, the forage it affords 

 is very considerable, every part of the stem and husk being applic- 

 able to the feeding of cattle."- D wight says that this crop is "nearly 

 as valuable to this country as all other kinds of corn united, and 

 yields a crop much more certain, and much more extensively useful 

 than any other."^ Besides its advantage of hardiness which made 



' According to the answers received by the Massachusetts Agricultural Society 

 to their questionnaire of 1806, the farms in Brookfield, an exceptionally prosper- 

 ous inland town in Worcester County, were divided as follows: Pasture, 33 acres; 

 mowing, 20 acres; tillage, 6 to 7 acres; orchards, 3 to 4 acres; and woodland, 33 

 acres. A considerable contrast is seen in the case of Brooklyn (now called Brook- 

 line), a town adjacent to Boston, which benefited by the market in that place. 

 Here we find a typical farm with 100 acres, of which 12 were in woodland, 20 

 in pasture, and 68 in mowing, tillage, and orchards. Papers, Vol. II., 1807. pp. 

 11, 12. 



^ Geographical and Statistical View, pp. 8-9. 



'Travels, II. 62. In another passage, II. 294, Dwight catalogues and de- 

 scribes ten varieties of maize grown in New England. Other writers who recog- 

 nized the importance of maize in the agricultural economy of New England were 

 the author of American Husbandry, who calls it "the grand product of the coun- 

 try on which the inhabitants principally feed," I. 50, and Livingston, American 

 Agriculture, pp. 334-335. 



