6 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



In regular rotation this should have been our apple year, 

 ])ut the crop was light, thoagh fair in quality and remunera- 

 tive in price. 



The commonly expressed opinion that the drouth was un- 

 precedented in sevei'ity is not correct, nor could it be attrib- 

 uted to especial cause. 



The earliest settlers of Massachusetts found a climate very 

 different from that where they had acquired their agricul- 

 tural experience and precepts ; irregular and fitful rainfall 

 was found to be a characteristic of this climate. 



The thermometer, a simple and necessary instrument of the 

 present day, was not made practicable until the beginning 

 of the eighteenth century, so that we have no record of the 

 heat experienced in the summers of the first century of set- 

 tlements upon this coast, but it is recorded that drouth was 

 an ever-present menace to the struggling colonists, who were 

 dependent upon the agriculture of a narrow area for their 

 entire subsistence. In time of failure of crop, their only hope 

 was in rescue from beyond seas. 



A partial drouth in 1623 — no rain falling from the latter 

 part of May until the middle of July — threatened the exist- 

 ence of the Plymouth Colony. In 1639, an early drouth 

 threw the Colony into great alarm, and there was a resort to 

 fasting and prayer. The years 1644, 1647, and 1648 were 

 years of drouth, and the records of the Colony for a century 

 sncceedins: show a continual recurrence at irregular intervals 

 of seasons like the summer just passed. 



There were also seasons of extreme wet and cold, like that 

 of 1632, causing "great store of musquitoes and rattle- 

 snakes," grasshopper and canker-worm plagues, and " mil- 

 lions of devourino; worms in armies." Great variations were 

 noticed in the winters, and it is probable that our climate is 

 no worse than our fathers found it in their early experi- 

 iences. 



The cultivation of corn was the important husbandry of 

 savage life. Indian corn is a tropical plant ; its origin was 

 in the genial climate of Central America. It can only ger- 

 minate when the moist ground is thoroughly warmed by the 

 sun ; its tropical habit demands a short, hot season. In the 

 fervid heat, it uncurls its graceful leaves, rears its towering 



