72

The county is well supplied with fencing and other tim-
ber. It has many large herring and shad fisheries, with
abundance of oysters, terrapins and other fish common to
the waters of the Chesapeake.

The land here sells at from five to fifty dollars per acre
the price being varied by the usual governing circumstances.
Much of it, of excellent quality, with fair improvements, can
be had for twenty dollars per acre. This is very cheap for a
productive home, in a good neighborhood, with a good soil
and genial climate. Thousands of our countrymen are?
to-day toiling on worse soils, costing a higher price, with
much less of the physical and social advantages than which this
county possesses.

TALBOT COUNTY.

This county has long and favorably been known as one of
the best, if not the very best cultivated and improved of any
of the counties of the State. For a long period great atten-
tion has been paid to the breeding of stock and the rational
use of fertilizers, and the result is a character for the pro-
duction of live stock—especially sheep—equal to any part of
the country, and a highly improved condition of the soil,
naturally not superior to the other counties of this Shore.
The basis of this improvement has moreover been almost ex-
clusively derived from its own resources, viz : Shell marl, sea-
weed and oyster shell lime, derived from the waters, which
afford direct and indirect sustenance to a large part of its
population. The use of marl and oyster shell lime had be-
come very general in this county when it had been but com-
paratively little known in other sections of the country.
Worn out and naturally poor lands were thus greatly im-
proved, which resulted in corresponding improvement in the
breed of live stock and a general diffusion of agricultural
knowledge and energy, which, in agricultural matters, has
placed this county in a very high position. Very much or
this has been due to the influences of the Eastern Shore Ag-
ricultural Society—an association of gentlemen, not only the
oldest of its kind in the State, but equal to any similar one
anywhere in the general intellectual cultivation of its mem-
bers, their unselfish devotion to and practical knowledge of
all that concerns the interests of agriculture. No association
anywhere, of the same number, combines more of intellectual
or moral worth, combined with the same degree of social re-
finement, as the Eastern Shore Agricultural Society. Com-
posed mainly of farmers of this county, they can enjoy the
satisfaction moreover of having contributed in a very great
degree to not only the agricultural, but to the moral and so-
cial improvement, not only of their own, but to adjoining;
counties, and, in some degree, to the whole State.