1884.] QUESTION BOX. 161 



miles of such ditches on my place, I get two tons to the 

 acre, and from my best hill meadows I get less than a ton. 

 In one case, I ridged a piece in the old fashioned way of rais- 

 ing corn, pulled out the bogs, and planted with corn the very 

 first year ; when the corn came up it looked well, but the first 

 time we undertook to hoe it, we could hardly break the soil. 

 I told my hired man that he might have half the corn that 

 grew there for half a month's work. In June there came 

 slight rains, the field was nothing but muck, but I got a large 

 crop of corn. In the fall, as soon as the crop was off, 1 

 smoothed off the ridges and sowed it to oats and grass ; the 

 oats came up as high as that chair and fell down flat, so I 

 got hardly any ; but the grass seed took very well, and that 

 piece produced over three tons to' the acre. 



Mr. Bill. I don't believe I can tell this company what it 

 is best for them to do if they have got bog meadows, but I 

 can tell them what is best to do with them if they have got 

 f 30,000 — make cranberry meadows of them. 



Mr. West. My idea of a bog meadow is something that is 

 saturated with water. I have in mind a piece of swamp or 

 bog meadow near me that was drained by open ditches, which 

 was worthless for agricultural purposes up to that time, but? 

 which now produces large crops. Two years ago the owner 

 raised large quantities of squashes upon that piece of ground, 

 while upon upland his' crop of squashes was an utter lailure. 

 Last season, a portion of it was planted with onions and other 

 crops, with good results. 



Mr, Hale. Three years ago, we commenced on a small 

 portion (perhaps an eighth of an acre) of a piece of land that 

 we had drained and made so dry that it was almost useless 

 for purposes of cultivation, and carted on sand from a hill 

 only a few rods away and dumped it a little in a place ; in 

 the spring, we plowed it in, and the benefit was so manifest 

 that first year that, last season, we laid tiles all through those 

 open ditches, and filled them up with sand, and put sand all 

 over the field. We spent all our leisure time, last winter, 

 II 



