PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 161 



This fear was not without some just foundation. The constantly 

 varying and occasionally extreme prices of grain and flour, have 

 interrupted the usually sound calculations of many mechanics 

 and farmers on a small scale, and obliged them to take, for im- 

 mediate consumption, means which they had provided for the 

 improvement and extension of their business. The occurrences 

 of the year admonish loudly of the folly and danger of all un- 

 necessary dependence on other states, for the essential articles of 

 subsistence. This admonition seems to have been, to some ex- 

 tent, regarded by the farmers ; Indian corn was fortunately 

 planted the last spring more extensively than usual ; it will give 

 more than an ordinary crop. This success should induce asso- 

 ciations to give increasingly liberal encouragement to the culti- 

 vation of this very important grain. Rugged as our soils are, 

 and variable as our climate is, Indian corn can be raised here 

 for less than the lowest price it is sold for, when imported from 

 other states. We have better assurances of success with this, 

 than any other grains which we raise. There has been nothing 

 like a failure in this crop, oftener than once in twenty years, 

 since the settlement of the country. We are not informed, that 

 there ever was an entire failure : the nearest approach to it of 

 which we have any knowledge, was in the year 1816; yet many 

 careful farmers saved enough imperfectly ripened corn in that 

 year, for the use of their families and domestic animals. We 

 can perform no better service for the farming community, than 

 in the adoption of effective measures to dispel prejudices on this 

 subject, and engage farmers with renewed zeal, in the culture of 

 an article which has been so justly styled, " the king of crops in 

 New England." 



The policy of this society, from the beginning, has been to 

 encourage, in offers of liberal premiums, the conversion of use- 

 less lands into productive fields. We have large tracts in the 

 county, so thickly covered with bushes, that little nutritive herb- 

 age for animals can grow there. Attention has been called to 

 this description of land, and some labors have been judiciously 

 applied to it. But we have made the premiums offered too soon 

 available. The applicants have labored diligently, but not long 

 enough, to subdue the roots of all the bushes. In passing over 

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