12 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



A glance at the history of this great industry in the United 

 States will therefore be found to possess much that is interest- 

 ing, instructive and useful. 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 



There is little need to look beyond the period of the 

 Revolution in search of the first steps at any real progress in 

 the agriculture of this country. The first European settlers 

 upon these shores had to begin life anew, as it were, in the 

 midst of untold hardships, privations, and dangers. They 

 found a climate widely diflferent from any which they had 

 known before ; a soil which the foot of civilized man had 

 never trod, and natural productions which they had never 

 seen. They brought with them little or no experience which 

 could have fitted them for the rude struggle with nature in 

 which they were about to engage. This they were forced to 

 gain, painfully and laboriously enough, with the axe in hand 

 to clear the forest, and the gun by their side to defend their 

 lives. That progress in agriculture should have been slow is 

 not, therefore, a matter of surprise. We must rather wonder 

 that they got on at all in the struggle for life. 



The difiereut colonies, no doubt, had a somewhat difierent 

 experience. The winters of Virginia were milder than those 

 of New England, and the settlers on the James River suflered 

 less from this cause than those farther north, but all were 

 alike surrounded by a wilderness infested by savage men and 

 by wild beasts, always ready to prey upon their live stock or 

 to destroy their crops. For some months after landing there 

 were, indeed, no cattle to be destroyed. The first animals 

 imported into the colonies were those that arrived at the 

 James River plantation some time previous to 1609, the 

 exact date of their arrival not being known. In 1610 several 

 cows Avere landed there, and a hundred more in 1611. The 

 first may have been brought by the early adventurers, cither 

 at the time of their first voyage, in 1607, or soon after, but 

 the later additions probably came from the West Indies, being 

 the descendants of the cattle brought to America, in his 

 second voyage, by Columbus, in 1493. 



So important was it considered that the cattle should be 

 allowed to increase and multiply that, according to old 



