476 Use of Fertilizers by American Indians [July, 
I can find no other direct allusions to the Indians in this con- 
nection, but may quote two passages relating to the practices of 
the early colony, which are quite significant in the light of those 
already presented. Thomas Morton, in his “ New England 
Canaan,” London, 1632, wrote of Virginia: “ There is a fish (by 
some called shadds, by some, allizes) that at the spring of the 
yeare passe up the rivers to spawn in the pond, & are taken in 
such multitudes in every river that hath a pond at the end that 
the inhabitants doung their grounds with them. You may see in 
one township a hundred acres together, set with these fish, every 
acre taking 1000 of them, & an acre thus dressed will produce 
and yeald so much corn as 3 acres without fish; & (least any Vir- 
ginea man would infere hereupon that the ground of New Eng- 
land was barren, because they use more fish in setting their 
corne, I desire them to be remembered, the cause is plaine in 
Virginea) they have it not to sett. But this practice is onely for 
the Indian maize (which must be set by hands), not for English 
grain: & this is, therefore a commodity there.” 
This passage is very interesting, describing as it does the use 
of fish fertilizers in Virginia two hundred and fifty years ago or 
more. To one who is acquainted with the habits of the herring 
family in the Virginia rivers and the persistency of local names, 
there can be little doubt that many menhaden were used as well 
as shad and the two kinds of river herring, all of these being 
common, in spring, in all the streams tributary to Chesapeake 
bay. 
In Edward Johnson’s “ Wonder-Working Providence of Sion’s 
Saviour in New England, being a Relation of the Firste Planting of 
New England in the yeare 1628,” London, 1654, written in 1652, 
the author says: “ But the Lord is pleased to provide for them 
(the colonists) great store of fish in the Spring-time, especially 
alwives, about the bignesse of a herring. Many thousand of 
these they used to put under their Indian corne, which they 
plant in hills five foot asunder; and assuredly when the Lord 
created these corne, Hee had a special eye to supply these His 
people’s wants with it, for ordinarily five or six grains doth pro- 
duce six hundred.” 
The following order from the records of the town of Ipswich, 
May 11, 1644, illustrates in a comical way the customs of the early 
colonists: “It is ordered that all the doggs for the space of three 
