On reclaiming JVaste Lands. 14/ 



memory ; and at the foot of it a various tract, gravelly and 

 inoory, broken into hollow spaces, in which waters rested 

 during the summer months, which waters were covered v.'ith 

 most of the aquatic plants native to stagnant pools. My 

 predecessor in possession of those watery wastes, during a 

 summer drought fed their interstices with sheep, which be- 

 came diseased, and many of them rotten. 



The mode I pursued was, as much as might be, to extract 

 the weeds, roots, and sediment ; lay them in heaps as a pre- 

 paration of manure measurably to replace and fertilize the 

 barren sands and gravel, brought from the heights to fill up 

 these hollows. I then opened ditches, raised their sides with 

 sand and gravel, and on them planted large cutting? of pop- 

 lars and willows. The ditching drained the soil, and the 

 materials from the heights raised this swamp to the i}roper 

 condition of meadow. The upland I inclosed with thorns 

 on a willow ley*, and within the banks inlaid them with 

 seedlino; trees and forest ; divers of the former have been 

 taken down for use, and some of the aquatic cuttings are 

 grown to a timber measure; while the several subdivisions, 

 meadow and upland, have been cultivated, and borne every 

 species of grain and herbage, confessedly upon an equality 

 with the long-tiilaged circumjacent fields. By a process 

 thus pursued, of which I have presumed to adduce this ex- 

 ample, the numerous millions of waste acres which yet dis- 

 fioure our nation, may, and will become, the seasons favour- 

 ing, under your and your compatriots' encouragement, a 

 widely-extended garden, replete with every useful production 

 congenial to our climate; and the boundary of its fields 

 fenced with faster- thriving trees, and more abundant in 

 number than the present large tracts of forest produce, pro- 

 vide for <reneralif)ns vet to come an increase of those neces- 

 flary timbers that have given this island an intercourse with 

 the inhabitants of every maritime clime, and an acknow- 

 ledged superiority in the conniiercial world, which probably 

 it would not have obtained but from the indigenous growth 

 of these not sufficiently valued timbers. Although your ex- 



• A wil/ow fence in this situation has the appearance of iinprobabihty, but 

 it i< yet improving. 



K i tended 



