Note 19 — Chapter VIII · Menaces of Famine and War.

Morton, in his New English Canaan, writes: “There is a fish, by some called shads, that at the spring of the year pass up the rivers to spawn in the ponds, and are taken in such multitudes in every river that hath a pond at the end, that the inhabitants dung their ground with them. You may see in one township a hundred acres together set with these fish, every acre taking a thousand of them. And an acre thus dressed will produce and yield so much corn as three acres without fish.”

It was the rule of the Indians to plant their corn when the leaves of the white oak were as big as the ear of a mouse. They put two or three fishes in every cornhill.