Q^ CUMBERLAND COUNTY SOCIETY. 



Your committee then called upon Mr. Joshua E. Hall, in Gorham, 

 near " Great Falls Village." Mr. Hall was absent from home, but 

 •his farm was viewed in part then, and more thoroughly since by two 

 members of the committee. Mr. H. purposes a general improve- 

 ment, comprising the building of wall ; underdraining ; planting new 

 orchards, and improving some dozen or more acres of pasture. 



There may be seen on this farm evidence of the most complete 

 success in a restoration of peat bog ; where the very last season his 

 cattle were mired so that he was obliged to get them out one at a 

 time, and that only by the aid of planks. Mr. Hall had this season 

 a very even and lu.xurient growth of potatoes, corn, peas and pump- 

 kins, over the whole of this acre which only last year was a mere 

 basin of soft mud matted over with an insecure carpet of moss and 

 fresh grass, tufted with rushes. 



With the examination of Mr. Hall's farm the field duties of the 

 committee terminated. Two of the members on their way home, , 

 accompanied by Mr. Goodale, called upon Mr. "Woodbury P. Manes, 

 in Windham, who with suflScient capital and enthusiasm has under- 

 taken to restore and improve the farm where he passed his boyhood ; 

 a portion of it consisted of a low, flat, boggy piece of land, full of 

 water, and covered with logs, stumps, bushes and other such rubbish. 

 Some fifteen acres of this piece is entirely changed ; the land has 

 been cleared by the axe and fire ; open and underdrains and deep 

 plowing have drawn ofi" the water ; the harrow and clod maul have 

 made smooth the surface of twelve acres, into which two hundred 

 and forty well trodden cords of stable manure was plowed, and this 

 year five acres of it ''laid down" with wheat, five with barley, and 

 the other two planted with potatoes. Not a stump, or stone, or in- 

 equality of surface can be seen any where upon the broad flat beds. 

 Within the last two years one hundred cords of wood, and the stumps 

 with which one hundred and forty rods of fence was constructed 

 have been removed from this now smooth field. And the plow was 

 still in active operation, moving steadily on its way to subdue other 

 twelve acres ; it was such plowing as we read of, but seldom see, 

 twelve heavy oxen dragging a No. 28 (Eagle) plow to its very beam, 

 which cut below the surface nineteen inches, and broke "as obdu- 

 rate a hearthpan as ever resisted the root of an oak" hacmatac or 

 swamp spruce. 



