GROWTH OF TOBACCO. 133 



merchants^ and Is on a thousand spots in course of being 

 expended in clearing and improving the stony and In 

 fertilising the gravelly and sandy soils of which a large 

 portion of the surface of Massachusetts consists. And 

 my third observation was, that though the drought of 

 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had extended into 

 Maine, its effects became less perceptible as I advanced 

 westward into the other New England States, till, in 

 Connecticut, the fields looked as beautifully green as I 

 had seen them last at the mouth of the Mersey; and 

 the after-grass was abundant. 



Along the Connecticut Elver, which runs through the 

 centre of this state, there is much good land, and tobacco 

 in considerable quantity is grown. upon it. The produce 

 per acre is from 1500 to 2500 pounds of marketable 

 tobacco. This is a very exhausting crop, as all leaf 

 crops are ; and land must be generously used which is to 

 continue long to yield crops such as these. 



The farming of Connecticut is said to have greatly 

 improved during the last fifteen years, and this is ascribed 

 in part, and probably with some truth, to the extensive 

 circulation and perusal of agricultural papers. In the 

 small country town of Farmlngton, (of two thousand 

 inhabitants,) for example, a friend of mine assured me 

 that not less that fifty agricultural papers were taken in 

 by the inhabitants. And most of these papers — the 

 American Agriculturist and American Cultivator^ for 

 example — are really well and usefully got up, and filled 

 with valuable information. 



A similar Improving character Is ascribed to the farm- 

 ing of Massachusetts, but less is said in favour of New 

 Hampshire and other parts of New England. Of the 

 first settlers in Connecticut and Massachusetts, many 

 were from the west and south-west of England, from 

 which places they naturally brought some parts of their 

 old home husbandry, as that of apple-growing and cider- 



