56 NATURAL HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPKY OF GROTON, MASS. 



mowing. They called by this name all grass-land that was 

 annually mown for hay, and especially that by the side of 

 a river or brook ; and this meaning of the word was and still is 

 the common one in England, whence they brought their lan- 

 guage. They sometimes spoke of a " swamp," meaning by it 

 what we call a " bog ; " but much of this kind of land has since 

 been reclaimed, and is known with us as " meadow." As a mat- 

 ter of fact it happened that the lands which could be mown 

 for the fodder were low lands, and it would require perhaps 

 less than a generation to transfer the meaning of mowing 

 lands to the low lands, which were nearly the only ones that 

 could be mown in the early days of the Colony. This expla- 

 nation will make clear the following vote of the town, passed 

 on February i8, 1 680-81 : — 



At the same meeting it was agreed vpon and voted that M' Hub- 

 herd [Hobart the minister] should haue all the comon which was 

 capable to mak medow in swan pond medow vp to the vpland for 

 seauen acre and a halfe for to mak vp his fifteen acres of medow 



The following names of meadows are found in the town- 

 records, and in a few instances I have indicated their locality: 



Accident; Angle, in the northerly part of the town; Big 

 Spring, in the neighborhood of Hawtree Brook ; Broad, imme- 

 diately west of the village; Brook; Brown Loaf, east of the 

 hill ; Buck, now lying within the limits of Nashua, New 

 Hampshire ; Burnt, east of the highway running from the 

 Lowell road to the Rocky Hill school; Cow Pond, near the 

 pond of that name; East; Ferney, near Brown Loaf ; Flaggy, 

 to the southward of the Baddacook road, near the pond ; 

 Flax; Great Flaggy, presumably near Flaggy, and perhaps 

 the same ; Great Half-Moon, the same as Half-Moon, which 

 lies east of the village ; Little Buck, probably a part of Buck 

 Meadow; Little Half-Moon, a part of Half-Moon, being an 

 offshoot from it ; Lodge ; Long ; Maple ; Massapoag, evi- 

 dently near Massapoag Pond; New Angle; Pine; Plain; 

 Pretty; Providence; Ouasoponagon, " on the other sid of the 

 riuer," near the Red Bridge, through which Wrangling Brook 

 runs; Reedy, known by this name to-day, lying north of the 



