280 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



our doors/' Aud later : ''You may see iu oue township a liuudrcd acres 

 together set with these iish, every acre taliiug- a thousand of them ; and 

 an acre thus dressed will produce and yield so much corn as three acres 

 without fish." In 1623 the drought was so severe and loug protracted 

 that the corn, planted very shallow and manured with these fish in the 

 hill, soon began to wither and curl up, and on the higher lands it was 

 ruined. And so in many years succeeding. 



Wheat was first sown by Goswold on Cuttyhnnk, one of the Eliz- 

 abeth Islands, in Buzzard's Bay, as early as 1602, when he first explored 

 the coast. In Virginia the first wheat appears to have been sown in 

 1611, and its culture continued to increase there till, in 1648, it is re- 

 corded that there were several hundred acres of it. But it soon after 

 fell into great disrepute as a staple crop, as the culture of tobacco was 

 found to pay a great deal better. For more than a hnndred years after 

 it was but little cultivated in that colony. Wheat was early cultivated 

 by the Dutch colony of the Kew Netherlands, for it is recorded that in 

 1626 samples of this grain were taken to Holland to show what could be 

 done in the new country. It is probable that the Plymouth colony began 

 its culture within two or three years of the settlement, though there 

 appears to be no distinct record of it until 1629, when wheat and other 

 grains for seed were ordered from England. 



But though the cultivation of wheat was begun almost simultaneously 

 with the settlement of the several colonies, it did not attract very great 

 attention for more than a century, Indian corn and, later, x)otatoes being 

 relied npon for food to a much greater extent. It was soon found to be 

 subject to blast and mildew in the eastern colonies. In July of 1663, 

 "the best wheat," according to an old manuscript diary that I have con- 

 sulted, "as also some other grain, was blasted in many places so that whole 

 acres were not worth reaping. We have had much drought the last sum- 

 mer, aud excess of wet several other springs, but this of blasting is the 

 first so general and remarkable that I yet heard of in ]^e w England." But 

 it was "heard of" often after that, and to such an extent that it never 

 became a very prominent crop in that part of the country. It is a mat- 

 ter of history that there never was a time in the eastern colonies when 

 it was a sure and reliable crop, unless it be so now with our improved 

 modes of culture and our better knoAvledge of the proper modes of till- 

 age, deep plowing, and thorough drainage. 



Eye and barley were also introduced and cultivated by the early set- 

 tlers, and it soon became the almost universal practice to mix the meal 

 of the former with Indian meal in the making of bread. It is known 

 to have been the custom as early as 1648, and probably it began 

 at a considerably earlier date, perhaps as early as 1630. Oats were also 

 introduced at the same time with rye. Captain Goswold raised them 

 with other grains on one of the Elizabeth Islands, on the southern coast 

 of Massachusetts, in 1602. Though much more extensively grown than 

 rye, they apipear to have been used chieflyas food for animals. The prac- 

 tice of sowing grass-seed, as we have seen, never became common iu the 

 colonies. It was not generally adopted till about the time of the Eevo- 

 lution, though here aud there an individual farmer may have tried to 

 see what he could do to help nature clothe the surface of his old fields, 

 but any general or systematic attemx)t to cultivate grasses for hay was 

 wholly unknown and unthought of. This culture was of recent origin 

 in this as well as in the mother-country, and is the result of modern im- 

 provement in agricaltiu?e. 



The culture of the potato, though introduced early in the history of 

 the colonies, being among the seed ordered for the Plymouth Colony as 



