90 OXFORD SOCIETY. 



inexliaustiblc mine of wealth, wliicli does not require to be dug, 

 but Avhicli the sunshine and frost, the drouth and the rain, serve 

 in turn to loosen out from the rocks, and hasten onward to the 

 rich intervales of the Saco, Presiiiupscot, Androscog;iin, Con- 

 necticut, and other rivers. Its rocks and minerals are of such 

 a nature as to be easily decomposed, and possess the elements 

 of fertility in the highest degree. The apparently useless 

 mosses, that cover its otherwise barren summits, are rich in 

 such material, while the immense forests, which the hand of man 

 can never remove, saturate the innumerable rivulets from its 

 sides with vegetable matter. Palsied be the hand of that man, 

 who would level the mountains at the sources of our ri\ers. 

 You may possibly exhaust your swamps of muck and other veg- 

 etable matter, but those mountains, like the mountains at the 

 source of the Nile, are inexhaustible in their elements of fer- 

 tility. 



The next class comprises your meadows. No one thing has 

 so forcibly struck me in the farming interests of this count}'', 

 as the almost entire neglect of its meadow lands witliin its 

 borders. Thousands of acres still exist in this county undis- 

 turbed by the hand of man, unless it be by some marauder after 

 a cedar post, when a small outlay would fit the land to pay the 

 interest from one to two hundred dollars an acre. Much of 

 the meadow does not require to be plowed and manured and 

 hoed every year to secure a crop of grass, but when once cleared 

 and drained, it remains for many years essentially the same ; 

 and if it be situated so as to be overflowed, it is doubtful whether 

 it ever need to depreciate. A bed of muck, from one to five 

 feet in thickness, when cleared of its stinted growth of wood, 

 and properly drained, with a coating of air-slacked lime or 

 ashes to neutralize the vegetable acids, and the letting in of 

 light and sunshine, will cause heavy crops of grass more valua- 

 ble than is wont to be estimated by the farmers of this county. 

 Travel through some portions of Kennebec county Avhere they 

 are far ahead of us generally in scientific farming, and you may 

 learn a lesson in the management and profit of your meadows. 

 By a system of drainage, England has reclaimed five millions of 

 acres from her heretofore unproductive swamps. 



I trust that I am addressing some here who will go home and 



