no 



and even then we may be puzzled to fix upon any system that will suit all 

 localities. 



The editor of the Michigan Farmer, in his letters from Europe this summer, 

 tells his readers, how moors, bogs, and other wet lands are made to produce 

 the various roots and grains raised in England and Scotland, in the greatest per- 

 fection. Their system however, needs shortening, and cheapening, which 

 yankee ingenuity can soon effect, and has already commenced. For instead of 

 removing tlie sod of their moors (marshes) by spade and by hand, I saw, the 

 other day down at Rochester, a plow made for the same purpose, which shaved 

 off four feet of sod at a lich. 



After all, the experienced ditcher, with his spade and his shovel, must lead off 

 in this business. No ditcliing plows or other machinery are of any use, on our 

 deep deposits of muck, till after the water with whicli our marshes are sub- 

 merged, is taken off, and the muck has time to harden. Our experience with 

 ditching plows has fully proven this ; while all who use the spade and the shovel 

 are succeeding well. 



Seeing the success of others, I have also engaged in these improvements, and 

 have laid the foundation on a somewhat large expenditure. I have secured in 

 one contiguous body on Crooked creek, over two thousand acres — two thirds of 

 whicli lies in the marsh. The centre of this tract is where the township line 

 between 35 and 36 crosses the west line of Laporte county, and the marsh and 

 the creek are correctly laid down on our State map. Tiie marsh is about one 

 and one-fourth miles wide — is level and wet, and is composed of a deep black 

 muck of decayed vegetable matter, from four to eiglit feet deep — seldom as low 

 as four ; and is sodded over with a stiff grass sod, yet of cohesiveness enough 

 below the sod to spade well, and the ditches to retain their shape. The whole 

 is underlaid with a stiff blue clay, or gravellj' hard pan. 



Of this two thousand acre tract, I am now enclosing eight hundred acres, with 

 a ditch of six feet wide at top, two feet at bottom and four feet deep. Two of 

 my ditches are across the marsh, one mile apart, and the other two are 

 along the edges, with a view of catching the water from the thousand and one 

 springs, which rise along the foot of the dry land, and to carry their water to the 

 creek. This eight hundred acres has but one spot of three acres of dry land 

 on it, and is apparently a perfect plane — yet my ditches siiow a fall of over six 

 feet to the mile from the dry land to tlie creek, and at least as great a descent 

 the other way ; and so uniform is the fall that the water in the ditches passes off 

 with a free and a quick current the wtiole length of the ditches. In near two 

 miles of ditches which I have already made, the muck is no where less than 

 four and a-half feet deep, nor seldom over six. I therefore think of deepening 

 my ditches to five feet, which will bring them nearly to tlie shape of a V. My 

 intention is, to subdivide this eight hundred acre tract, with the same kind of 

 dilches, into forty acre lots, with a bridge, a gate and a watering place to each 

 lot, and to leave the ditches open, for the double purpose of a drain and a fence. 

 The cost, all told, will be fifty cents a rod, or one dollar per acre ; and with this 

 expenditure I expect to have the best of grass land ; and may, after two or three 

 ycars^ exposure to the sun and close pasturing, tell you what else we will have. 



