34 
CAPE COD. 
voted that every housekeeper should kill twelve black 
birds or three crows, which did great damage to the corn 
and this vote was repeated for many years.” In 1695 
an additional order was passed, namely, that every un¬ 
married man in the township shall kill six blackbirds, or 
thi’ee crows, while he remains single ; as a penalty for 
not doing it, shall not be married until he obey this 
order.” The blackbirds, however, still molest the corn. 
I saw them at it the next summer, and there w^ere many 
scarecrows, if not scare-blackbirds, in the fields, which 1 
often mistook for men. From which I concluded, that 
either many men were not married, or many blackbirds 
were. Yet they put but three or four kernels in a hill, 
and let fewer plants remain than we do. In the account 
of Eastham, in the “ Historical Collections,” printed in 
1802, it is said, that “more corn is produced than the 
inhabitants consume, and about a thousand bushels are 
annually sent to market. The soil being free from 
stones, a plough passes through it speedily ; and after the 
corn has come up, a small Cape horse, somewhat larger 
than a goat, will, with the assistance of two boys, easily 
hoe three or four acres in a day; several farmers are 
accustomed to produce five hundred bushels of grain an¬ 
nually, and not long since one raised eight hundred 
bushels on sixty acres.” Similar accounts are given to¬ 
day ; indeed, the recent accounts are in some instances 
suspectable repetitions of the old, and I have no doubt 
that their statements are as often founded on the excep¬ 
tion as the rule, and that by far the greater number of 
acres are as barren as they appear to be. It is suffi¬ 
ciently remarkable that any crops can be raised here, 
and it may be owing, as others have suggested, to the 
amount of moisture in the atmosphere, the warmth of 
