62 THE CONNECTICUT AGEICULTUEAL 



use. Mr. Lewis has to haul his more than a mile and hauls hun- 

 dreds of loads, tips a load in a place, covers the ground all over 

 and claims good results, and certainly he grows the tinest vegeta- 

 bles I ever saw. In years past he has used great quantities of 

 stable manure, ashes, etc. Mr. Barrows' and my muck beds are 

 so handy we can haul an ox load each hour in the day." 



Mr. Perkins' cultivable land in Pleasant Valley lies nearly level, 

 and but slightly higher than the Muck Swamp into which it gra- 

 dates. The soil consists largely of clay and silt washed from the 

 surrounding hills, or brought in by the streams from distant 

 higher lands. It appears to be mostly a deep, luoist, fine-textured 

 loam, and to have, for a New England soil, a more than usual 

 stock of native fertility. It is a soil which needs nothing to help 

 it retain moisture, which is not deficient in organic matter and 

 which only requires small amounts of fertilizing applications with 

 judicious tillage and rotation, and in the moister parts, deep 

 drainage, to maintain it in a productive state. Such a soil is evi- 

 dently not of the kind to be benefited by swamp muck. Some of 

 Mr. Perkins' neighbors who work coarse-textured, hungry soils 

 which let the water through them like a riddle, find that Swamp 

 Muck is very useful to them. They, however, do not rely upon it 

 as a direct source of plant food. They use with it ""large quanti- 

 ties of stable manure, ashes, etc." The muck is just as valuable 

 as an " amendment," to give to ground the texture and physical 

 qualities of " loam " or of " garden soil " as stable manure is, and 

 the stable manure, ashes, etc., serve to set up that "fermentation" 

 or decomposition in Swamp Muck which renders its nitrogen of 

 avail. 



The use of Swamp Muck on grass land, or on tilled soil newly 

 broken up from grass and therefore well stocked with humus, is 

 of the nature of " carrying coals to Newcastle." In market gard- 

 ening, where the continual tillage tends to the rapid removal of 

 organic matter, muck may well take, more or less, the place of 

 stable manure, according to its quality and cost. 



The quality of Swamp Muck can be roughly inferred from the 

 following considerations: AVhen the swamp is a basin with a 

 small outlet or none, when the " wash " that enters it comes copi- 

 ously from good or rich soil, when the herbage that grows on it is 

 tall and rank, when large quantities of forest leaves accumulate in 

 it, we may safely assume that the muck will be relatively rich in 

 plant-food. It is from such deposits that the muck has been ob- 



