PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 41 



Mr. GuLLEY said the copper solutions have been used with great success 

 in restraining rot of the plum and peach, and all other kinds of fungous 

 diseases of leaf and fruit. Mr. Willaed expressed great faith in them. 



ONIONS ON MUCK SOIL 



was the subject of the next paper, read by the secretary, in the absence of 



its author, Mr. W. H. Parmelee of Hilliards, Allegan county. It was as 



follows : 



By request of your secretary, I send you a brief sketch of my experince 

 in onion-raising upon muck land. I should be much pleased to be with 

 you in person and share in your discussions; but, circumstances not favor- 

 ing, I must content myself with writing, hoping by this means to be of 

 some benefit to others, while I hope to be profited by your deliberations, 

 in due time, by reading them in print. 



EVOLUTION OF AN ONION FIELD. 



To begin with, I am writing no fancy sketch, neither am I giving the 

 opinion of others solely, for I have been right there myself, crawling for 

 miles on hand and knee, weeding-knife in hand, using hoe and spade with 

 greater freedom than I can use the pen. The swamps of Michigan diflPer 

 much in their make-up. We have had no experience in reclaiming cranberry 

 marshes or swamps of a springy nature. Ours was simply a dish of about 

 five acres in extent, in which water would stand quite de&p in a wet time, 

 but in a very dry fall would disappear entirely. Thirty-seven years ago it 

 was covered with a dense growth of tall pine, bordered with black ash. with 

 alders interspersed. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, a fire ran through it, 

 felling the timber in every conceivable direction, and there for a number 

 of years it lay, about thirty roads from my house, a perfect eyesore to gaze 

 at. It was the rendezvous of frogs which gave us many an evening 

 serenade in full chorus; while the wily rattlesnake, as if on picket duty, 

 lay in ambush on its outskirts. The spring rains would fill it with water, 

 from one to three feet deep, and there it would lie and stagnate in the hot 

 summer's sun, and thus it became a fruiful source of malaria in the neigh- 

 borhood. 



To remove this stench from our nostrils was the work undertaken — with 

 no reference, however, to the onion business at the time we undertook the 

 job. That was an afterthought. We had to go about ninety rods to find 

 a good outlet, from three to five feet deep through dryer land. We first 

 tried open ditches, ran the water out, cleared the timber off, and commenced 

 cropping it; but the ditches soon filled, and we lost the use of the land. It 

 became a skating-rink for the boys in winter, and they could paddle their 

 canoes over it in the spring. Though baffled we were not defeated in our 

 plans; but went at it again, made a careful survey, found we had sufficient 

 fall to give a line of tile through the ninety-rods outlet a grade of one 

 inch in four rods, and bring it two feet under ground in the swamjj. 



HOW THE TILE WERE LAID. 



We purchased the tile, using six-inch for outlet, branching around in 

 the swamp with three-inch. We placed a large barrel in a suitable place 

 6 



