IMPROVEMENT OF PEAT LANDS. 47 



Sand is stated to have been applied to a drained bog in Scot 

 land, at the rate of a single-horse cart-load to every square yard 

 of surface but the land was so soft that, in order to prevent 

 sinking, the horses had wooden clogs or pattens on their feet 

 that is, a wooden shoe much broader than the foot. The simple 

 method, above described, of using a single railway easily trans 

 ferable, would obviate all the difficulty mentioned. 



8. IMPROVEMENT or CHAT-MOSS. I shall insert here the 

 answers which I received from a very extensive improver of 

 bog land on Chat-Moss, to questions which I proposed to him, 

 acknowledging, at the same time, my obligations to his kindness. 



(1.) The condition of the bog or moss ? It was originally a 

 sterile, wet soil, wholly unproductive. 



(2.) How drained? By close drains, four and a half yards 

 from each other, using no other material but the sods to make 

 the close drains, which are from thirty to thirty-six inches deep. 

 The fields are one hundred and fifty yards wide, by three hun 

 dred yards in length, divided by open drains four feet deep, into 

 which the close drains discharge themselves. 



(3.) What applications are made ? After the drainage is com 

 plete, it has been usual to lead, upon each acre of land, one hun 

 dred and twenty tons of marl, from the margin of the moss ; and 

 afterwards to spread forty tons of Manchester night soil.* The 

 ground is then fit for cropping. 



may be found to require. The cost of marling was stated by Mr. Roscoe at 

 10 per acre, at which cheap rate it would not have been possible to have per 

 formed the work, but for the assistance of an iron railway, laid upon boards or 

 sleepers, and movable at pleasure. Along such a road the marl was conveyed 

 in wagons with small iron wheels. Each wagon, carrying about 15 hundred weight, 

 was drawn by a man ; and this quantity was as much as, without the employment 

 of the railway, could have been conveyed over the moss by a cart with a driver 

 and two horses.&quot; 



This, to some of my readers, may seem an early use of the iron railways. 

 Some form of them was adopted ten years before this, at some of the coal 

 quarries. 



* It may be interesting to my agricultural readers to know something of the 

 amount of this manure collected in Manchester. My other readers, beino- fore 

 warned, are of course forearmed. 



The night soil of Manchester is taken into the country by carts, and must be 

 removed before 9 o clock in summer, and 10 o clock in winter. (In Boston, 

 U. S. A., they order these things better. The night carts are not suffered to 



