224 THE WASTE AND CONSERVATION OF PLANT FOOD. 



they should have store enough come up ye biooke by which they begaue 

 to build and taught them how to take it." ' 



Another account mentioned by Goode of the practice of the Indians 

 in this i'esi)ect may be found in George Mourt's Ivelation or Journal 

 of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at 

 Plimouth in New England, by Certain English Adventurers, both Mer- 

 chants and others, London, 1622. '"We set the last spring some twenty 

 acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and i)ease, and, 

 according to the manner of the Indians, Ave manured our ground with 

 herrings, or rather shads, which we have in great abundance and take 

 with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and God be 

 praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indif- 

 ferent good."- 



Thomas Morton, in his New England Canaan, London, 1(532, wrote 

 of Virginia: "There is a fish (by some called shadds, by some, allizes,) 

 that at the spring of the yeare passe up the rivers to spawn in the 

 pond, and are taken in such multitudes in every river that hath a pond 

 at the end that the inhabitants doung their ground with them. You 

 may see in one township a hundred acres together, set with these fish, 

 every acre taking 1,000 of them, and an acre thus dressed will produce 

 and yield so much corn as three acres without fish; and (least any 

 Virginea man would infere hereupon that the ground of New England 

 was barren, because they use more fish in setting their corue, I desire 

 them to be remembered, the cause is plaine in Virginea) they have it 

 not to sett. But this i^ractice is onely for the Indian maize (which 

 must be set by hands), not for English grain; and this is, therefore, a 

 commodity there." 



The following amusing study quoted by Goode is taken from the 

 records of the town of Ipswich, May 11, 1014: "It is ordered that all 

 the doggs for the space of three weeks from the publishing hereof, 

 shall have one legg tyed up, and if such a dog shall break loose and be 

 found doing harm the owner of the dogg shall pay damage. If a man 

 refuse to tye up his dogg's legg, and hee bee found scraping u^) fish in 

 a cornfield, the owner thereof shall pay twelve i)ence damage beside 

 whatever danuige the dogg doth. But if any fish their house lotts and 

 receive damage by doggs, the owners of these house lotts shall bear the 

 damage themselves." 



The ijractice of using fish, therefore, for fertilizing purposes is many 

 centuries old, but until recent years the farmers residing along the 

 coast were the only (mes who received any benefit therefrom; but since 

 the more careful scientific study of the value of fish fertilization, the 

 nitrogenous elements taken from the sea by the fish now find their way 

 not only to the gardens and truck farms along the New England and 

 New Jersey coasts but also to the wheat fields of Ohio and the cotton 

 fields of North Carolina. 



iCoU. Mass. Hist. Soc, dtU series, No. 3, 1856, page 100. 

 » Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, 2(1 series, No, 9, 1832, page (50, 



