PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 355 



It has been said we have no agricultural science in America; 

 that for this commodity, we are dependent upon Europe. 



If we, of the old colony, can make little pretensions to the 

 science of agriculture, (literally speaking,) we claim at least, 

 the virtues of industry and economy, and we have learned 

 something of the economy of making and saving manure, and 

 of its judicious application to the soil — of crops judiciously 

 arranged and suited to the soil ; and we have some practical 

 skill in the cultivation of crops, that compare favorably with 

 any raised in the United States. If then, as has been truly 

 remarked, "in the first stages of civilization, art precedes, 

 science follows," reasoning from analogy, may we not consider 

 ourselves in a fair way to attain (at no very distant day) a 

 sprinkling of old colony agricultural science? And as this will 

 be applicable to our soil, perhaps it may not then be necessary 

 to continue the importation. 



Competitors for premiums the present season, exceed in num- 

 bers those of former years. More than eighty entries were 

 seasonably made, and your supervisor, in the discharge of his 

 duties, has visited the fields entered for premiums, three times; 

 in doing this, he has travelled some four hundred miles. 



Seven claims were originally entered for the greatest crop of 

 Indian corn on one acre. 



After a season of excessive moisture, and notwithstanding 

 the trustees, at their last annual meeting, saw fit to raise the 

 standard of computation to eighty-five pounds of corn in the 

 ear, for a bushel, yet we think the number of bushels raised 

 on the acre this season, will compare favorably" with former 

 years. 



Selh Sprague, of Duxbury, is entitled to the first premium 

 of eight dollars. He raised, according to measurement, 101|| 

 bushels on an acre. This crop was raised on a sandy soil, 

 bearing incontrovertible evidence that it was once the site of 

 Indian wigwams, and that the tribe was accustomed to banquet 

 on clam chowder, and it would require no very great stretch of 

 the imagination to carry us back to the time, when on this 

 spot, the old sachems and their tribes were wont to assemble 

 around the council fires, to smoke the pipe of peace, — to hold 

 their pow-wows or perform the war dance. 



