302 STATE BOARD OF AGKICULTUKE. 



much as I was selected, without my knowledge, I will try to furnish a few of 

 the elementary principles connected therewith. 



This subject is one which is of an entirely different character from any other 

 branch of agriculture. Stock raising is carried on more or less extensively by 

 every farmer. The produce of different kinds of grain, fruit, and vegetables 

 is equally extensive ; and the various theories for stock raising and their proper 

 management and care, the different modes of producing from a variety of soils, 

 the different kinds of grain, fruits, etc, are subjects of constant discussion 

 through the agricultural journals. But the drainage of swamps, marshes, and 

 other low lands, and their successful cultivation, especially in this county, is 

 comparatively a modern theme, and but few farmers have been successful in 

 their enterprise. The reason for the failures in very many instances I shall 

 attempt to explain. 



I shall not weary your patience by reading to you the copies of various agri- 

 cultural reports upon the subject, nor shall I undertake to furnish you witli the 

 correct chemical analysis of the substances which taken together constitute a 

 marsh, for you all know tliat the principal difficulty and greatest objection to 

 it for cultivation is the presence of too much water. But very few people whose 

 interests are not directly connected with agriculture or its products have any 

 realizing sense of the effect of a wet or a dry season upon the aggregate wealth 

 of the region in which it prevails. They hear that rain is wanted in the coun- 

 try, or that the crops are suffering from continued wet weather; and they dis- 

 miss the subject by saying tlmt the farmer is never satisfied. But few of 

 them are aware how much such expressions convey to the mind of the man 

 whose means of subsistence and whose labor may be wholly destroyed by a 

 superabundance of rain. It is the farmer who suffers, and he is able to stand, 

 it, they say. If then so great a loss is sustained in a single year from an excess 

 of rain, what must be the effect upon the man whose farm is from one-quarter 

 to one half under water at all times, by reason of a swamp or marsh. If a 

 farm of IGO acres of good tillable land produce to the owner 8S00 or 85 per 

 acre profit, and an adjoining farm of IGO acres be one-quarter marsh wliieh 

 produces nothing to the owner, then it is easy for us to see that this farmer has 

 sustained a loss of $200 in a single year by reason of said marsh, and very many 

 there are in this county in just that condition, which have been under cultiva- 

 tion for forty years, aggregating a loss to the owner of §8,000, and the marsh 

 on hand yet. Would ic not be wise and proficable for the owner of that farm 

 to expend in reclaiming said marsh even three times the annual profit per acre, 

 or SOOO, which will in nine cases out of ten successfully drain a marsh of that 

 extent, and render it the most productive part of the farm, for all farmers who 

 have had any experience in reclaiming low lands will testify that they produce 

 more grain and hay and are the easiest cultivated of any part of the farm. A 

 single instance will show something of the productiveness of a reclaimed marsh 

 on the farm of Lay Pemberton in this townsliip. 



I, Lay Pemberton, do hereby certify that in the year 1872 I harvested and threshed 

 eighty bushels of good nuvrketable wheat from one and three-quarter acres actual 

 measurement, it being the lirst crop of any kind of grain ever grown on that piece 

 of ground, for it was formerly under water all the year round, and tliat said piece of 

 reclaimed marsh still retains its productiveness notwithstanding the successive dry 

 seasons. 



[Signed] Lay Pemijektox. 



Many unsuccessful attemj)ts at drainage have no doubt come under the ob- 

 servation of every farmer present, and I presume there are some here who have 



