360 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



inside, they would serve for travelling lanterns. Such stock 

 cannot be profitable. 



I want some of the owners of this stock to go and see the 

 farm of Linus Green, of Hadley — the man they laughed at for 

 his efforts to improve his farm, and called him " compost 

 Green." Who is green now, the men that laughed, or the 

 man that made green fields ? 



There is another man in the same town, who calls himself a 

 farmer, who throws his weeds and potato vines in the road, in- 

 stead of the compost heap, and lets at interest all the monev 

 he can starve out of his farm, or cheat out of his heirs by skin- 

 ning his land. But he is not Green, and I suppose he is too 

 stingy even to get blue. He is a land destroyer. 



Another man in South Hadley — perhaps you know him — 

 owns the best bull exhibited at the Connecticut State Fair. 

 You may learn something of liim.* 



I suppose if you should visit Moses Stebbins, of Franklin 

 county, and see him putting salt upon his land, you would call 

 him a fool, thus to waste his money. Perhaps some of you 

 have called him so already. Go right home and salt your as- 

 paragus bed, your quince trees, your plum trees, and see who 

 is the fool that did not know some of the most valuable uses of 

 salt. Put salt into every compost heap, and salt every worm 

 unto death. 



Farmers in North Hadley and Sunderland haul leached ashes 

 from Ware, some twenty miles, and find it profitable, notwith- 

 standing the small amount of potash they contain. It is worth 

 their while to think whether there is not some cheaper manure, 

 or some way of producing the same effect. Suppose they buy 

 potash, lime, phosphates, ammonia, and not haul the clay, and 

 sand, and water, — mere earth — that composes the bulk of a 

 pile of leached ashes, 



I would recommend the use of guano — but one of your wise 

 men condemns the use, and says it exhausts the soil. A man 

 upon a poor piece of pine-plain land, that was absolutely barren, 

 by the use of guano produced a fine crop of corn; and lie wants 

 to know if his land, that was worthless before, has been seriously 

 injured. There is a man in Hadley tliat may give you some 



* The speaker alluded to the President of the Society. 



