102 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



greatly to its health and comfort, then a little time and money 

 spent in the garden are well invested. If a cellar furnishes a 

 solid foundation for the barn, and warm and convenient room 

 for stabling and storage without any additional shingles, then 

 the intelligent farm manager will be sure to have a barn cellar. 



Alexander Hyde, Chairman. 



PLYMOUTH. 



From the Supervisor's Report. 



Increased production may be secured at a ruinous loss to the 

 productive capacity of the soil, as is painfully apparent in the 

 condition of numerous farms, once fertile and fruitful, but now 

 exhausted and almost sterile ; once teeming with busy life, but 

 now almost or entirely deserted. Such impoverishment of the 

 soil is not peculiar to Massachusetts or even to New England. 

 The same process is in continual operation in other parts of the 

 country, although the same result may not be so speedily 

 reached in the more fertile soils of the so-called producing 

 States as it has been in Massachusetts. 



To prevent as far as possible the repetition in the future of 

 the process of deterioration, and to remedy as far as practicable 

 the evil consequences of its prevalence in the past, is the appro- 

 priate office of agricultural societies. They aim also at " in- 

 creased production," with this very significant qualification, 

 " from diminished areas." One of the agencies employed by 

 them for this purpose is the offer of premiums for field crops, 

 to be awarded mainly upon the basis of comparative quantities 

 per acre ; and this basis of awards, however much it may be 

 objected to by men claiming for themselves peculiar shrewdness, 

 is the most satisfactory in its results, considering both the crops 

 and the condition of the land, of any yet devised. From the 

 evils consequent on the cultivation of land which has been, and 

 is growing year by year less productive, the cultivator of pre- 

 mium crops is sure of exemption. The conditions essential to 

 his success, are liberal and judicious applications of plant-food 

 and frequent and thorough cultivation ; and these conditions 

 fulfilled, the results must inevitably be generous returns, in the 

 form of present harvests, and increased capacity of the soil for 

 future production. 



