484 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



1st. In dnngfiiig corn in the boles, put two in a bill in any kind of soil 

 where corn will grow, and you will have a good crop. The Indians on 

 the sea-coasts used to dung tbeir corn with wilks and other shell-fish, 

 and with fish if they could get it. 



2d. By spreading those fish on the ground for grass a good crop is 

 produced; put tbem on a piece of poor loamy land, at the distance of 

 15 inches from each otber on the turf, exposed to the sun and air. and 

 by their putrefaction they so enrich the land that you may mow about 

 two tons per acre. How long tbis manure will last experience has not 

 yet determined. 



3d. An experiment was made tbe last summer by one of my near 

 neighbors, Mr. Jonathan Tuthill, in raising vegetables with tbis fish- 

 manure. About tbe first of June he carted near half an ox-cart load of 

 those fish on 20 feet square of poor light laud, being loam mixed with 

 sand. The fish he spread as equally as be could by throwing them out of 

 the cart. Being exi)osed to the weather they were soon consumed. He 

 then raked off the bones to prevent their hurting the feet of the children 

 who might go into the garden, and plowed up tbe piece and planted it 

 with cucumbers and a few cabbages. The season was extremely dry^ 

 and but very few cucumbers were raised in the neighborhood except 

 what grew on tbis small i)iece of ground, and here the production ex- 

 ceeded anything that had been known. By bis own computation, and 

 that of his neighbors, tbis 20 feet square of ground produced more than 

 forty bushels of cucumbers, besides some fine cabbages. I measured 

 tbe ground myself, and make no doubt of tbe quantity adjudged to have 

 grown on the same. 



By putting these fish on the land for manure, exposed to the air until 

 they are consumed, there can be no doubt that a considerable part of 

 the manure is lost by the effluvia wbich passes off the putrefied sub- 

 stance, as is evident from the next experiment. 



4th. Mr. Joseph Glover, a farmer in Suffolk County, having a small 

 poor farm, for a few years past has gone into the practice of making 

 manure witb these fish for tbe purpose of enriching bis land, wbich is a 

 loamy soil, dry, and in parts light. He first carts eartb and makes a bed 

 of such circumference as will admit of being nine inches thick ; be then 

 puts on one load of fisb, then covers tbis load with four loads of common 

 eartb ; but if he can get rich dirt be then covers it with six loads, and 

 in that manner makes of fish and eartli a heap of about tliirty loads. 

 The whole mass soon becomes impregnated and turns black. By ex- 

 perience he finds that fifteen ox-cart loads of tbis manure is a sufficient' 

 dressing for one acre of his poor land, which produces him thirty bushela 

 of the best wheat by the acre, and the next year from the same land 

 sown with clover-seed he has cut four tons of hay, which he computes 

 at two loads and a half by the acre. The expense of making this ma- 

 nure where the fish are plenty cannot exceed three shillings per ton, 

 and is the cheapest manure, considering its quality, of any yet known^ 



