78 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



little manure. Their staple crops of corn, potatoes, grass and 

 small grain were abundant, in favorable seasons. A record care- 

 fully kept in Essex County shows that in the early part of this 

 century, there were raised to the acre, 28 bushels of wheat, 117 

 bushels of corn, 52 bushels of barley, 518 bushels of common 

 potatoes, 900 bushels of carrots, 1,034 bushels of mangel-wurzel, 

 688 bushels of swedes, 783 bushels of beets, 654 bushels of onions ; 

 thirty tons of hay grew on six acres, and the yearly average of 

 forty acres was, for many years, more than 120 tons. Their 

 pastures were luxuriant ; and the abundance of sweet grass en- 

 abled them to feed with considerable profit, animals whose ex- 

 cessive carcasses rendered a liberal supply of food imperatively 

 necessary. Their wants were few and simple, their labor was 

 cheap, their markets were seldom overstocked ; and they fol- 

 lowed the advice of Dr. Putnam in our day, and resolved " to 

 stay at home," because they had no convenient and rapid means 

 of getting away. They had but little book-farming, and that 

 little was 'of such a description that it secured their contempt 

 rather than their respect or admiration. Their conflict was com- 

 paratively light, and their victory comparatively easy. 



Now, however, new difficulties beset our path — difficulties 

 which must be met by systematic and methodized farming in 

 order that they may be overcome. The soil of the older States, 

 and already too much of the soil of the newer ones, has become 

 exhausted by constant cropping. The natural productions of 

 the earth are diminished ; and crops which grew luxuriantly 

 with easy cultivation a century ago, now require the most care- 

 ful hvisbandry and a judicious application of manures. An acre 

 of land in Massachusetts to-day, will probably absorb in cultiva- . 

 tion for most crops, five times as much money, in labor, cost of 

 manure, cost of seed and interest on capital, as it would fifty 

 years ago. The busin'ess of fertilizing has become a most im- 

 portant one. The difficulty experienced in obtaining barnyard 

 manure, the cost of transporting so bulky a material, and the 

 labor required in handling it, are now serious obstacles in the 

 way of using this manure at all — obstacles which our ancestors 

 hardly considered. And all the chemical ingenuity of man is 

 employed in finding a substitute. 



The cost of food for cattle, and the deterioration of our pas- 

 tures, combine to render the business of cattle-feeding one in 



