106 ENCOURAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



length, infests the salt marshes in such numbers as almost 

 entirely to consume the grass ; and when the scanty- 

 crop of hay is gathered, it is so tainted with the putres- 

 cent bodies of the dead locusts contained in it that it is 

 rejected by cattle and horses.* It is some small return 

 for their ravages that the bodies of these creatures 

 manure the fields they have infested, and that poultry 

 thrive upon them. Young turkeys, in the summer, live 

 almost entirely upon these grasshoppers in parts of Mas- 

 sachusetts, and become fat. 



The Northumberland Agricultural Society, which has 

 its headquarters at Douglas, has hitherto been the most 

 influential in the province, and has received the largest 

 share of the legislative grant for the encouragement of 

 agriculture. A method of promoting improvement 

 among the rural population, which is common to the 

 provincial and to the New England state legislatures, is 

 to give from the public funds to every society a sum of 

 money, bearing a fixed proportion to the amount raised 

 among its own members. In New Brunswick, for every 

 pound subscribed in a district for the promotion of agri- 

 culture, the Legislature formerly gave £2, and now give 

 as much as £3, from the Provincial Treasury, thus 

 stimulating at once and rewarding the local subscribers. 

 For this purpose, £6150 were voted by the New Bruns- 

 wick Legislature in 1848. 



In this district I found some of the best farming and 

 best farmers in the province, and some of the warmest 

 friends of agricultural improvement. As there are at 

 present many farms to be disposed of upon the Miramichi 

 Kiver, for which persons who know something of agricul- 

 ture are eagerly desired from the Old Country, I 

 shall insert the average produce, price, and weight per 

 bushel, of the usually cultivated crops in the county of 



* Harris's Insects of Massac] uisetts Injurious to Agriculture, p. 136. 



