46 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



indispensable farm product. During the latter part of the 

 last century, and the earlier part of the present, its cultiva- 

 tion in new soils was so easy, and its yield so abundant, that 

 it became an important article of food. No account was taken 

 of it in the census, however, till 1840, when the yield was 

 reported as 108,298,060 bushels. Since that time the liability 

 to disease has become so great that the production has not 

 increased in the same ratio as many other crops, though the 

 amount, by the census of 1870, including over 20,000,000 

 sweet potatoes, was 165,047,297 bushels. It has at times 

 formed no inconsiderable item of export, though by no means 

 to be compared in this respect with wheat and Indian corn. 

 It is largely used in the feeding of stock in some sections of 

 the country. 



AN EARLY EXPORT. * 



The culture of tobacco was undertaken by the settlers in 

 Virginia from the very outset of the colony. It is recorded 

 that in 1615 the gardens, fields, and streets of Jamestown 

 were planted with tobacco. It immediately became not only 

 the great staple crop, but the principal currency of the 

 colony. By the year 1622 the product amounted to 60,000 

 pounds, and it more than doubled in the next twenty years. 

 The culture of this plant was introduced into the Dutch 

 colony of New York in 1646, though it never gained the 

 prominence there that it did farther south. But Maryland, 

 the Carolinas, Louisiana, and later, Kentucky, made it the 

 leading object of their culture almost from their first settle- 

 ment. It long constituted the most valuable export of British 

 America ; but the product per acre had been diminishing for 

 many years before the Revolution, owing to the difliculty of 

 supplying manure, and the consequent exhaustion of the soil. 

 But from 1744 to 1776 the exports of this crop averaged 

 40,000,000 pounds a year. 



Toliacco has now become a somewhat prominent crop in 

 Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in both of these States 

 its culture is ra^Didly extending. In 1850, for instance, but 

 138,246 pounds were raised in Massachusetts; in 1860 the 

 crop increased to 3,233,198 pounds, and in 1870 to 7,312,885, 

 while the crop of 1872 is probably at least 25 per cent, greater 



