be cheaper than a black one, on account of the greater liability to be mistaken for a deer and killed by the wolves. When cows were so high as to sell, in 1636, at from twenty-five to thirty pounds sterling, and oxen at forty pounds a pair, a quart of new milk could be bought for a penny, and four eggs at the same price. It is important to bear in mind that the cattle of that day, even in England, were not to be compared with the beautiful animals now to be seen there. The ox of that day was small, ill-shaped, and in every way inferior to the ox of the present time. The sheep has, since then, been improved to an equal, or even greater extent, both in form and size, and in the fineness and value of its wool. The draught-horse, so serviceable on the farm, long the pride of London, and now, to an almost equal extent, of most of our large cities, was not then known. It is difficult to appreciate fully the changes which the increased attention to agriculture has effected in our domestic animals, even within the last half century. But when we consider that no attention whatever was paid to the culture of the grasses; that very few, if any, of the vegetables, now extensively cultivated as food for stock, were then introduced there; that the introduction of red clover into England did not take place till 1633; of sainfoin, not till 1651; of yellow clover, not till 1659; and of white, or Dutch clover, not till the year 1700; and that the form, size, and perfection of animals depend largely upon a full supply of food and good care when young, we shall cease to wonder, when we are told by the highest authority, that during the early part of the last century the average gross weight of the neat cattle brought for sale to the Smithfield market was not over three hundred and seventy pounds, and that of sheep, twenty-eight pounds; while the average weight of the former is now over eight hundred pounds, and of the latter, over eighty pounds. mitted a greater degree of reliance on the wild luxuriance of nature. The cattle that first arrived, in 1624, were kept through the long winters on poor and miserable swale hay, or more frequently on the salt hay cut from the marshes, and death from starvation and exposure was no uncommon occurrence, the farmer sometimes losing his entire herd. The treatment of animals now as they were treated during the whole, or nearly the whole, of the first century of the colony, would subject the owner to prosecution for cruelty. This treatment was, in part, no doubt, owing to the poverty of the settlers, but more, probably, to the ideas and practices in which they had been early trained in a different climate. Besides, on account of the high price of cattle at that period, and the risks to which they were exposed, it is not probable that the settlers selected the best specimens then to be found in England. There is no evidence that they were at all particular in this respect. Nor was the difficulty of procuring agricultural implements the least of the obstacles to the successful pursuit of farming. A few, no doubt, were brought over, from time to time, from the mother country, but all could not obtain them in this way; while the only metal to be had was made of bog ore, very brittle, and liable to break and put a stop to a day's work. Most were made of wood, and those imported were extremely rude in construction, being very heavy and unwieldy, and having comparatively little fitness for the purpose for which they were designed. The process of casting steel was not discovered till the middle of the last century, and then it was kept a secret in Sheffield for some years. number and variety of implements have been infinitely increased, as we shall see, even within the last half century, to meet the wants of a more advanced state of agriculture, to which, indeed, these mechanical improvements have, in their turn, largely contributed. The It is a fact worthy of note in this con- Indian corn, pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, nection, as it throws much light upon the and tobacco, were plants which few of the early farming in this country, that the ex- early colonists had ever seen previous to their tensive and practical cultivation of the nat- arrival here, but necessity taught them their ural grasses originated here; or, at least, was value, and they were not slow in adopting introduced here long before it was into the Indian methods of cultivating them. England. The necessities of our rigorous As the general cultivation among the coloclimate, indeed, compelled attention to this nies continued much the same for many branch of husbandry very soon after the set-years, with slight modifications, on the intlement, while the climate of England ad- troduction of the European implements, it may not be inappropriate to turn our attention, for a moment, to the agriculture of the natives. Most of the hard work among the Indians, it is well known, fell to the lot of the women, with the assistance, sometimes, of the old men and little boys. Among their thankless tasks was that of farming, which they carried on to an extent quite remarkable, when we consider the rudeness of the implements with which they had to work, and the circumstances in which they were placed. They had no art of manufacturing metal, and, of course, could have no suitable contrivances for tilling the ground. Their cultivation was not so rude, however, as one would naturally suppose. They made a kind of hoe by tying the shoulder-blade of a moose, bear, or deer, to a stick or pole, and managed to do much of the work with that. The land, when selected, was cleared by keeping up a fire around the foot of each tree till its bark was so burned that it would die. Then they planted their corn. When a tree fell, it was burned into pieces of such length that they could be rolled into a heap and burned to ashes. In this way, by degrees, a piece covered with wood was wholly cleared. An industrious woman could burn off as many dry, fallen logs in a day as a strong man could, at that time, cut with an axe in two or three. They used a stone axe, made much in the same manner as the hoe above described, to scrape the charred surface of the logs and hasten the burning. This mode of clearing was pretty common among the natives in different parts of the country. Sometimes the tree was first girdled with the axe and thus killed, allowed to become dry, and then burned by kindling a fire around it, as above described. Several of these stone axes, of different sizes, are now in my possession. The Indians taught the settlers to select the finest ears of corn for seed, to plant it at a proper time, to weed it, and to hill it. They were accustomed to dig small holes four feet apart, with a clumsy instrument resembling the one described, which was made, not unfrequently, of a large clamshell. Those living in the vicinity of the sea-shore put into each hole a horse-shoe crab or two, or a fish, upon which they dropped four, and sometimes six kernels of corn, and covered it with the implement with which they had dug the hole. The use of fish in the hill as a fertilizer was common, also, in the interior. Beans were planted. with the corn after it had come up, and grew up supported by it. Great attention was paid to the protection of their crops from weeds, while the corn was carefully guarded from destruction by insects and birds. To prevent loss by the latter, a small watch-house was erected in the midst of a field of corn, in which one of the family, often the eldest child, slept, and early in the morning rose to watch the birds. It was their universal custom to hill the corn, often from one to two feet high, for its support, and spots are often seen at the present day which were evidently cultivated by them. The colonists very generally imitated this custom, and it has been continued down to our own times in many parts of the country. The men planted and cured their tobacco, which was, ordinarily, the only plant they worked upon, the women managing all the rest. This brief sketch of the farming of the Indians would not be complete without an allusion to their mode of storing grain for their winter supply. Large holes were dug in the earth, and the sides carefully lined with bark; this was also the work of the women. The corn and the beans, after being dried in the sun, or on rocks or flakes over a fire, were thrown into these holes, and then they were covered up level with the surface of the ground. They were thus preserved, if necessary, through the winter. These excavated barns were carefully concealed by the women from their lazy husbands and sons, lest they should discover and eat up their contents; yet, with all the care they could take, the hogs of the colonists often unhinged their barn-doors, and helped themselves to the golden treasure. History says that one of these Indian barns was discovered by the pilgrims at Truro, at a time when their store of provisions was so reduced as to contain but five kernels of corn to each individual. They sometimes made additional provision for winter by means of large boxes of wicker-work, or bags or sacks of hemp, which were filled and kept in the wigwam for the more immediate wants of the family. They had, of course, little or no occasion to cut grass, though it grew in abundance along the marshes and the rivers, and in places which had been cleared for cultivation. It was of a coarse quality, and served the colo nists a good turn till they resorted to the cultivation of better. We may imagine the surprise of the natives at the first sight of a plough. They could not understand so complicated a machine. They wanted to see it work; and when it tore up more ground in a day than they, with their clam-shells, could scrape up in a month, and they saw the colter and the share to be of iron, they told the ploughman if he was not the devil himself, he was very much like him. The first sight of a ship, it is recorded, had excited their wonder even to a greater extent. To them it was a floating island; its masts were nothing but trees; its sails were clouds; its discharge of guns was thunder and lightning; but as soon as the thunder and lightning ceased, they pushed off their canoes to go and pick strawberries on the island! This cursory glance at the early surroundings of the settlers of the country, will enable us the better to comprehend the difficulties in the way of making rapid progress. When poor and miserable cattle, poor and miserable implements, poor and miserable ideas of farming were the best of every thing they had, we can well imagine that little was done which was not forced upon them by the pressure of necessity. Their wants were too many, and required too vigorous exertions to provide what was indispensable, to admit of their spending time to experiment or seek out new principles to be applied to practical farming. As long as new lands could be had almost for the asking, it was not to be expected that they would till them very thoroughly. The soil was rich in mould-the accumulation of ages-and did not require very careful cultivation to secure an abundant return. But years of constant cropping exhausted its productiveness, when other lands were taken to subject to the same process. The farmer raised wheat year after year on the same land, till the soil became too poor, and then he planted corn; and when it would no longer grow corn, he sowed barley, or rye, and so on to beans. The farm labor. It was performed as an evil The inhabitants of country towns, a hundred years ago, most of whom were, of course, engaged in tilling the soil, seldom visited even their neighboring towns, and many a farmer and farmer's son did not leave his own township from one year's end to another. The liberalizing influence of social intercourse was unknown and unappreciated, unless the village tavern and the frequent glass might be considered as forming an exception, while it afforded an opportunity, of which most men availed themselves, of forming new acquaintances and talking over the stale gossip of the neighborhood, or indulging in the ribald jest. People for some miles around turned out to a "raising," as the erection of a frame building was termed, and a merry time it was, where the flip and the cider flowed like water. On a more limited scale, the "huskings" brought together, also, a pretty large neighborhood, when the same favorite drinks did much to enliven a long autumn evening, the whole being followed by a sumptuous repast of pumpkin pies, etc., continued into the small hours of the night. Then the "spinning bees" afforded a time for talk, and song, and riddle. Election day often, however, brought the people from a greater distance. No butcher drove up to the farmer's door, with his ever fresh supply of meats, to give variety to the daily and homely fare; no baker, with his jingling bells, travelled his rounds on stated days to relieve the monotony of the housewife's toil. Salted meats were the almost universal food from autumn till spring, and often from spring till autumn, though now and then a sheep or a lamb fell a victim to the necessity for change. No cottons, no calicoes, no ginghams, no linens, no flannels loaded the counters of the village store, to be had at a Agriculture, so far as any real improve- sixpence, or a ninepence, or a quarter a ment was concerned, was, therefore, natural- yard. The farmer, and the farmer's family, ly enough, in a state of extreme depression wore homespun, and the spinning-wheel and for more than a century and a half after the establishment of colonies in various parts of the country. There were few intelligent cultivators previous to the Revolution, and there was no spirit of inquiry to give a charm to the huge timber loom were a part of nearly every household furniture, and their noise was rarely silenced. If linens were wanted, the flax was sown, and weeded, and pulled, and rotted, and broken, and swingled-for all of which processes nearly a year was re- that, too, in "the old of the moon;" if he quired before the fibre was ready for spin- did not sow just as much rye to the acre, ning, and bleaching on the grass, and making use the same number of oxen to plough, and and wearing. If woollens, the sheep were get in his crops on the same day; or if he sheared, and the wool dyed and got in read- did not hoe as many times as his father and iness, and months were often required before his grandfather did-if, in fine, he did not it could be got into shape for wearing. wear the same kind of homespun dress and Courtships were, therefore, of longer dura- adopt the same religious views and prejution than many of them now-a-days, and two dices, he was shunned in company by the years was about as soon as the betrothed old and young, and looked upon as a visionfarmer's daughter could get ready to go to ary. He knew nothing of a rotation of keeping house. Not unfrequently the flax crops. The use and value of manures were had to be sown as the preliminary step, and little regarded. Even so late as within the to pass through all its forms of transition in-memory of men still living, the barn was to cloth and garments. With our present sometimes removed to get it out of the way facilities for manufacturing by machinery of heaps of manure by which it was surevery conceivable variety of fabric, and that, too, in the shortest space of time, it is impossible to appreciate fully the state of things among all classes of society a century ago. Even the old processes of curing and preparing flax, and the variety of fabrics made from it, have undergone an entire change. Processes which then required many months to complete, are now wholly avoided by the more perfect and economical ones at present known and in constant use. Owing to the imperfect provision for schools for the great body of the people, the boy was trained up to a narrow routine of labor, as his fathers had been for a century before. He often affected to despise all intelligent cultivation of the soil, and not only scrupulously followed the beaten track, but was intolerant of all innovation, simply because it was innovation. Very few of the rural population of that day saw a newspaper or a journal of any kind. There were This is no picture drawn from the imaginot, probably, a dozen published in the nation. It is strictly and literally true of whole country a century ago. There was the farming of the country as a whole, a not one in New England at the beginning of century ago, though it should be remarked the last century, and but four in 1750, and that a slightly modified state of things exthese had an extremely small circulation be-isted in localities widely distant. But with yond the limits of the metropolis. Obstinate adherence to prejudice of any kind is now generally regarded as a mark of ignorance or stupidity. A century ago, the reverse was the case. In many a small country town a greater degree of intelligence except on the part of the parson and the doctor-than was possessed by his neighbors, brought down upon the possessor the ridicule of the whole community. If he ventured to make experiments, to strike out new paths of practice and adopt new modes of culture; or if he did not plant just as many acres of corn as his fathers did, and rounded, because the owner would not go to the expense of removing these accumulations and put them upon his fields. The swine were generally allowed to run at large; the cattle were seldom or never housed at night during the summer and fall months; the potato patch often came up to the very door, and the litter of the yard seldom left much to admire in the general appearance of things about the barn or the house. Farmers thought it necessary to let their cattle run at large very late in the fall, and to stand exposed to the severest colds of a winter's day, "to toughen." It was the common opinion in the Virginia colony, that housing and milking cows in the winter would kill them. Orchards had been planted in many parts of the country, but the fruit was, as a general thing, of an inferior quality, and used chiefly for the purpose of making cider. some differences in detail, it will be found to be consonant with historical facts. It would be extremely interesting, were it in our power, to support, by accurate statistics, this general view of the condition of farming during the last century, but, unfortunately, no reliable statistics were taken till the year 1790, and then, chiefly to ascertain the number of the population, with special reference to the distribution of the representation, or the political power of the several states. We are, therefore, wholly destitute of statistical information of the products of farming industry during the last century; nor was it till the fourth decennial census, in 1820, that the population was divided according to industrial pursuits, so that we have no means of ascertaining even the number engaged in the occupation of farming. We only know that the general estimate of the population at the time of the Revolution, which fixed it at three millions, was considerably too high. upon mind, by means of association or social intercourse, is of comparatively recent origin in this country. It can scarcely date back to the beginning of the present century, though the necessity of it had, even then, become impressed upon the minds of patriotic and public-spirited men. On the 20th of July, 1794, Washington, then president of the United States, addressed a letter to Sir John Sinclair, in which he says: "It will be some time, I fear, before an agricultural society, with congressional aid, will be established in this country. We must walk, as other countries have, before we can run; smaller societies must prepare the way for greater; but, with the lights before us, I hope we shall not be so slow in maturation as older nations have been. An attempt, as you will perceive by the enclosed outlines of a plan, is making to establish a state society in Pennsylvania for agricultural The occurrence of the Revolution, and the period immediately succeeding, very naturally brought men of all pursuits and from all parts of the country more frequently and closely together, and gave all classes, and farmers among the rest, a more general knowledge of what was passing in the world around them. Intercommunication became more easy and frequent, and had its influence upon the masses of the people. In the latter part of the last century many left the seaboard and removed to the interior to avoid the inconvenience arising from the difficul- improvements. If it succeeds, it will be a ties between this and the mother country, and for other reasons; more attention began to be paid to agriculture. Emigration from the east began to set toward the so-called inexhaustible west, which at that time meant central or western New York. Up to this point our survey of the condition of agriculture has necessarily been general. No one branch of farming had made any marked and perceptible progress. It has been said that a good strong man could have carried all the implements in use on the farm, except the cart and old clumsy harrow, upon his shoulders, fifty years ago, and we know that many a year occurred when grain, and even hay, had to be imported from England to keep the people and the cattle from starvation. Hereafter, it will be more convenient to trace the progress of the different branches of farm industry, and the means brought to bear in the development and improvement of agriculture, in a more distinct and separate manner, in order that we may get a clearer idea of the relative progress and influence of each. And first, of the origin and growth of ASSOCIATED AND LEGISLATIVE EFFORT. One of the characteristic features of the farming of the present day, is the extent to which associated effort is brought to bear upon all its details, by way of exhibitions, premiums, clubs for discussion, and the publication of reports for wide and gratuitous distribution. This enormous power of mind step in the ladder; at present, it is too much in embryo to decide upon the result." And again, in his annual address on the 7th December, 1796, when he met for the last time the two houses of Congress, he said: "It will not be doubted that, with reference to either individual or national welfare, agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as nations advance in population, and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent, and renders the cultivation of the soil more and more an object of public patronage. Institutions for promoting it grow up, supported by the public purse; and to what object can it be dedicated with greater propriety? Among the means which have been employed to this end, none have been attended with greater success than the establishment of boards, composed of proper characters, charged with collecting and diffusing information, and enabled, by premiums and small pecuniary aids, to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement. "This species of establishment contributes doubly to the increase of improvement, by stimulating to enterprise and experiment, and by drawing to a common centre the results, everywhere, of individual skill and observation, and spreading them thence over the whole nation. Experience, accordingly, has shown that they are very cheap instruments of immense national benefit." Some few individuals, even before this date, had felt the necessity for some such ac |