374 JOHN BART RAM TO [1757. 



is so much engaged in public business, that we had no convenient 

 opportunity of sending a letter until now ; but I assure thee, I 

 have not forgot thee, nor the agreeable hours I spent with thee. 



I have often thought, that your salt marsh mud, may be so 

 ordered as to be of extraordinary benefit to your country, and you 

 have enough of it. Suppose you were to dig a large quantity of 

 it, and haul it to shore, as you may easily do in the winter, when 

 the ground is froze. Our ditchers choose to do it in winter ; they 

 are not so subject to catch cold. They have strong, tight boots. 

 They dig ditches twelve or fourteen feet wide, and four feet deep, 

 to drain our marshes ; and we commonly dig pits eight feet deep, 

 to mend them, or to haul the mud on our fast land to enrich it, 

 which will last near twenty years. You should put a layer of mud, 

 half a foot or more thick, then such a quantity of common mould, 

 then a layer of mud, stratum super stratum, until your bed is four 

 feet thick. Let it lie and ferment a year ; then cut down to the 

 bottom, and toss it all together into another bed, and let it remain 

 half a year longer, or more, then spread it on your ground. 



I have had an account from Sicily, that they manure their wheat 

 ground there with salt, mixed after this manner with mould ; but 

 it is observed that the salt fetched from one place doth not agree 

 with all sorts of the soil on the island, but they adapt the salts 

 made in different parts to the different soils. Perhaps, if required, 

 I may give thee a more particular account ; but our travellers into 

 the different parts of the world are very deficient in relating the 

 true methods of agriculture, which the inhabitants practise in their 

 respective countries. They think, if they relate their observations 

 of the old ruins, the extravagant diversions of the people, their 

 government, and superstition, then, they think they have done 

 much ; although it is little more than what many of the former 

 travellers have done long before them. 



January the 24th, 1757. 



Worthy Friend Eliot : 



I did not receive thy kind letter of March the 14th, until lately. 

 Our friend Benjamin had put it in his drawer, and could not find 

 it, when he looked for it. 



I am sorry thee did not get my son's drawings. The rector got 

 all of them. My son wrote thy name on those for thee ; and the 



