CUMBERLAND COUNTY SOCIETY. 59 



down a man thirty years younger. His design is to demonstrate 

 that the very poorest of sandy soil may, by judicious culture and 

 management, be induced to yield up remunerating crops for men 

 who are unable to obtain better land. To destroy the natural growth 

 of worthless bushes, he first plows in the autumn, then throughout 

 the following season repeatedly harrows over and thus exposes the 

 entire amount of roots to the sun ; then he spreads on muck com- 

 posted with " Thomaston quick lime, gas lime, and salt." He also 

 uses the debris of some ancient coal pits with, as he shows, marked 

 success. 



Your committee next examined the farm of Mr. Charles Hunne- 

 well, in South Windham. Mr. H. with his wonted energy and 

 shrewdness has laid out for himself a programme, to accomplish 

 which will admit of but little relaxation from labor during the three 

 years' test. His proposed improvements are in a better sub-division 

 of his farm ; in constructing better fences and walls ] in his pastures 

 and live stock ; in open and under drains ; in his fields and road- 

 ways ; in setting out fruit and ornamental trees ; in new buildings ; 

 in the completion of his new barn and its cellar ; and in the restora- 

 tion of a swampy swale. 



In an interval between official days, two members of your com- 

 mittee visited " Elmwood farm," the homestead of Mr. Stephen L. 

 Stephenson, a fine old place and a valuable tract of land, about 

 equidistant from the villages of Gorham and Saccarappa. Mr. S. 

 with a well informed mind, persevering energy, and genuine indus- 

 try, is directing his best efforts to the restoration of land somewhat 

 exhausted by years of close cropping without receiving adequate re- 

 turn of nourishment. He designs to make his farm pay, each year, 

 for its own improvement ; and his first step has been to substitute 

 feeding off upon the place, by live stock, the produce of hay, &c.; 

 instead of selling it off, the past practice, so likely to obtain upon a 

 farm possessing such great natural strength and fertility. In further- 

 ance of his new plan, Mr. S. had a large herd of neat stock in one 

 lot and sheep in another, and he clearly, and by the figures, shewed 

 that those of them which he had kept the preceding winter had paid 

 him ten dollars a ton for the privilege of masticating his hay and 

 manufiicturing it into dressing for his fields. Among many excel- 

 lent animals, he pointed out a remarkably fine grade Devon heifer 



