162 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tioned ten acres, was a deep muck bed, and could not be ploughed 

 in the condition in which it then was, four years ago. Mr. A. 

 consequently determined to try the experiment of covering it 

 with gravel, which was done by his farm hands and teams, in 

 the leisure days of winter. The following spring it was sowed 

 with timothy ; the seed started, but there was no crop worth 

 cutting that year. In the fall it was heavily top-dressed, with 

 barnyard manure and thirty bushels of unleached ashes to the 

 acre. The effect of these fertilizers on the mixed gravel and 

 muck Mr. Appleton described to the committee as wonderful, 

 as for the next two seasons he cut over three tons to the acre of 

 the best quality of hay. This, he said, taught him the value of 

 muck land, when mixed with the earth of the uplands, whether 

 gravel, or sand, or loam. He does not, however, recommend to 

 others the same treatment of similar lowlands. The heavy 

 gravelling is too expensive to be profitable, and the same result 

 can be much more cheaply reached by draining, then ploughing 

 and laying down to grass. Last year and this, he is under- 

 draining with tile, the same kind of land, and after having 

 ploughed it, top-dressing it lightly with gravel. In his opinion, 

 this muck-land does not require as " thorough " draining as 

 heavy clay does — say sixty feet apart will do for the tiles. A 

 five-acre lot of such land, which has been cleared of roots, and 

 stumps, and alder bushes, last fall, so that it was ploughed and 

 sowed in December, was making a good show of grass when the 

 committee saw it. This piece had no other dressing than the 

 ashes of the bushes and stumps burned when it was cleared. 



This fall, ten acres more of this swamp have been ploughed, 

 and (in this case) before draining. Another, and perhaps the 

 most important experiment made by Mr. Appleton in reclaim- 

 ing swamp-land, is upon a piece of thirteen acres, lying upon 

 the line of the Eastern Railroad. This piece is " thorough- 

 drained," with round tile and collars, thirty-three feet apart, 

 and three to four feet deep ; and a complete report on it by the 

 Essex Agricultural Society's committee on under-draining, with 

 a diagram of the work, was published in the society's volume of 

 Transactions for 1870. It may be well to add here that this land 

 is entirely unlike either of the pieces previously mentioned, hav- 

 ing presented originally a broken surface of knobs and of pond- 

 holes, with numerous springs. It consequently required a 



