Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/487

 Islands.

The land in which wheat was sown was put into a condition to receive the seeds by means of the plough, the use of this instrument for breaking up the soil being now more general than it was in 1649, when it was stated that not more than one hundred and fifty ploughs were at work in the Colony. This implement would have been employed still more frequently but for the shortness of the time in which a field was exhausted by cultivation; in the case of low grounds, this condition was reached in eight years, and in the case of lands less favorably situated, in three. It was just as true of this period as of all preceding it, that the method of clearing away the forest by which the surface was left covered with stumps, was the most serious impediment to the general use of the plough. When the stumps had rotted in the ground, the latter had been abandoned as too poor for further cultivation. It does not appear to have been the custom to fallow the land which was to be sown in wheat; one