SECRETARY'S REPORT. 183 



pregnated with salt, and in many places the mud is filled with small 

 clams and muscles. The bed is sand, clay and soil, the deposits of 

 the shores around. 



There are localities on these bottoms which apparently are all 

 clay. Some of these spots have been selected to transport from, and 

 spread upon soils adjoining, and have never produced good effect, 

 while mud, clams, and muscles, taken in the vicinity of these clay 

 bottoms, have invariably produced good. 



The uses made of these manures, and the effects produced from 

 them, so far as I have been informed, are as follows : 



The bottom of these bays, inlets, or rivers, or rather the top of 

 these deposits, when the tide is ebbed out, has been taken in the 

 winter and carried on to the mowing fields, or grass lands, and cul- 

 tivated grounds, spread in the spring, and the effect is very apparent. 

 If spread upon a worn-out field of clay loam, it invariably produces 

 a crop of clover. If spread upon a sandy or gravelly loam, it pro- 

 duces clover and herds grass. If the land is very much worn out, 

 and covered with white weed, it will very much diminish the white 

 weed, and enlarge the crop of clover ; and this without ploughing 

 or sowing any seed. 



Rock-weed, as it is called, spread on old worn-out fields, of a 

 gravelly soil, produces a crop of timothy or herds grass. If put on 

 a clay loam, it will produce clover and herds grass. 



I have statements from quite a number of individuals giving me 

 this result, besides, I have examined quite a number of localities 

 which showed the effects produced. 



I had a piece of old worn out field or pasture, of about one and 

 one-quarter acre, on which, in the winter, I put a quantity of mud 

 taken from our docks, where the water is almost fresh, very slightly 

 brackish, and spread it in the spring. The land last year, presented 

 nothing but white weed and poverty grass, as it is called, and very 

 little of that. This year, it came up with the same, and run quite 

 tall ; but now, at the date I am writing, (June 21st,) a very thick 

 coat of clover is coming up, the kind I cannot say, as it is not head- 

 ed, but I think it the red clover. This fact is so evident, that I 

 have called the attention of an old farmer, who has lived on the spot 

 a number of years. He don't know what to make of it. He thinks 

 I must have sown clover seed in the night-time. I can assure you 



