Page 618 of 2651

Mr Kalm, the Swedish traveller, when he gives an account of the

husbandry of some of the English colonies in North America, as he

found it in 1749, observes, accordingly, that he can with

difficulty discover there the character of the English nation, so

well skilled in all the different branches of agriculture. They

make scarce any manure for their corn fields, he says; but when

one piece of ground has been exhausted by continual cropping,

they clear and cultivate another piece of fresh land; and when

that is exhausted, proceed to a third. Their cattle are allowed

to wander through the woods and other uncultivated grounds, where

they are half-starved; having long ago extirpated almost all the

annual grasses, by cropping them too early in the spring, before

they had time to form their flowers, or to shed their seeds.

{Kalm's Travels, vol 1, pp.