SECRETARY'S REPORT. 117 



Some of these men no doubt may be thinking of sending to Peru 

 for guano, or some where else for some dear-bought and far- 

 fetched fertilizer. Shame on them ! — their brains need some 

 kind of stimulating application quite as badly as their lean and 

 impoverished soil. Instead of this or the like, the sink, the 

 suds, and the priv}^, should, if possible, be discharged by a com- 

 mon sluice into the deposit of the stable, and that under cover 

 and accessible to the hogs, to be by them worked over, and 

 mixed with from ten to twenty times the bulk of muck, if acces- 

 sible, sea weeds, leaves of the forest, sods from low places or 

 the road side, or worthless vegetable matter of any kind, which 

 the farmer can procure the cheapest. Ashes, chip manure, saw 

 dust, spent tan, old plastering, and the like, should all contrib- 

 ute if handy to make one common mass, well mixed and elabo- 

 rated, fermented and saturated; and when applied, especially 

 if put in the hill, it should be made fine, — a point too often neg- 

 lected. Intimate union and reciprocal interchange of air and 

 moisture with the soil is thus secured, which to the present crop 

 is of infinite advantage. These places may be supplied with 

 muck and the like, separate, if they cannot be brought together. 

 Swamp muck, though not so plentiful in this town as in some 

 towns around us, is still quite abundant. Our farmers, on an 

 average, would not have to haul it more than a hundred rods, 

 though some would not be able to get the best quality. Muck 

 differs in value, I think, according to the difference of material 

 of which it was originally made ; that formed from the waste of 

 hard wood growth must be of more value than that formed from 

 soft wood. The latter has neither the compactness and solidity 

 when dry, nor the chemical elements of vegetation of the form- 

 er, while in like situations it is, from its very composition, more 

 abundantly acid. All muck that I have examined is more or 

 less acid, from its long seclusion from air, heat and frost. This 

 must be corrected before it is fit to be applied to any soil not 

 powerfully alkali?ie. Hence, composting with ashes or lime, is 

 the readiest mode of fitting muck for use, though 'much may be 

 done by long exposure in open air to heat and frost, and hence it is 

 that owners of muck bogs would find it to their great advan- 

 tage to drain them thoroughly; uncover by burning or other- 

 wise tlie surface, and the material would not only be more read* 



