20 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



EARLY MODES OF CULTIVATION. 



Of the crops raised by the early settlers, and upon which 

 they relied chiefly for sustenance, Indian corn, pumpkins, 

 squashes, potatoes, and tobacco, were mostly new to them. 

 Few Europeans had ever seen them cultivated previous to 

 their arrival here, but necessity soon showed their value, and 

 from the Indians they learned how to grow them. It was a 

 method followed with little change down to the opening of 

 the present century. It was to dig small holes in the ground 

 about four feet apart, put in a fish or two, drop the seed, four 

 or six kernels* of corn, and cover it up. The instrument used 

 by the Indians for this purpose was made of a large clam- 

 shell, but the colonists soon substituted the heavy mattock or 

 grub-hoe. The James River settlers, under the tuition of the 

 Indians, began to raise corn in 1608, and within three years 

 after they appear to have had as many as thirty acres under 

 cultivation. The Pilgrims found it under cultivation by the 

 Indians on their arrival at Plymouth, and began its culture in 

 1621, manuring, as the Indians did, with alewives, then 

 called " shads." An early chronicle of the Pilgrims says, 

 "According to the manner of the Indians, we manured our 

 ground with herrings, or rather shads, which we have in great 

 abundance and take with great ease at our doors." And 

 later : " You may see in one township a hundred acres to- 

 gether set with these fish, every acre taking a thousand of 

 them ; and an acre thus dressed will produce and yield so 

 much corn as three acres without fish." In 1623 the drought 

 was so severe and long protracted that the corn, planted very 

 shallow and manured with these fish in the hill, soon began to 

 wither and curl up, and on the higher lands it was ruined. 

 And so in many years succeeding. 



WHEAT. 



Wheat was first sown by Gosnold, on Cuttyhunk, one of the 

 Elizabeth Islands, in Buzzard's Bay, as early as 1602, when 

 he first explored the coast. In Virginia, the first wheat 

 appears to have been sown in 1611, and its culture continued 

 to increase there till, in 1648, it is recorded that there were 

 several hundred acres of it. But it soon after fell into great 



