354 PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 



Supervisor's Report. 



We cultivate the soil that received the first impress from the 

 footsteps of the hardy pioneers, who landed on our shores more 

 than two hundred years ago. They foimd fields then cleared 

 and cultivated with maize or Indian corn, (a grain unknown to 

 Europeans till the discovery of this continent) ; in the process 

 of time, those fields became exhausted of fertilizing material, 

 and a resort was had by the natives of the soil to the rivers 

 and ponds, at certain seasons of the year, for alewives and other 

 fish, to restore to the soil its primitive productiveness. Un- 

 skilled in the arts of husbandry adapted to the New World, our 

 progenitors followed in the footsteps of their savage tutors, — 

 cleared the land most easily cultivated, and which, from the 

 nature of the soil, was the more readily exhausted ; the sili- 

 cious virgin soil, rich in accumulated vegetable matter, for 

 a while withstood the heavy drafts, but as generation succeeded 

 generation, and pursued the same course, and cultivated the 

 same fields with cereal grains, without any adequate returns of 

 fertilizing manure, their crops began to fail, the paternal acres 

 were abandoned by enterprising youth, and new locations 

 sought in the western wilds. 



Little was done for the amelioration of the soil in this 

 county, prior to the organization of this society, some thirty 

 years ago. Since then, our progress has been onward ; prior to 

 that time, little attention was paid to the renovation of low 

 meadow or swamp lands, which have so liberally rewarded the 

 labors of the husbandman, with large crops of rich herbage. 



Little was done in the manufacture of compost manure, an 

 article so necessary to restore to our exhausted fields their 

 wonted fertility. 



Little was done in the judicious alternation of crops, a sys- 

 tem so necessary for the amelioration of the soil. 



It is their boast that the agriculture of England has doubled 

 its products within the last half century. We would make no 

 invidious comparisons, but we claim for Plymouth county a 

 much greater increase in the productions of her soil. 



