THE CHEMISTRY OF BOG RECLAMATION. 205 



sheep-drains need not, and, indeed, must not be cut so deep. 

 The drains are cut wedge-shape by what are called Scotch 

 tools, which employ three men two to cut and one to hook 

 out the sods ; and all that is requisite to form a permanent 

 drain is to replace the wedge-shaped sod, and ram it down be*- 

 tween the walls of the drain, where it consolidates and forms a 

 tube which will remain open for an indefinite number of years. 

 We have them here as good as new, made twenty-five years 

 ago ; and at Chat Moss, in Lancashire, they are much older. 

 After land has been thus drained but not too much drained, 

 or it will become dry turf the surface begins to sink ; what 

 was tumid settles down, and in the course of a few months the 

 land itself becomes depressed on the surface and much consoli- 

 dated. Next it is to be dug by spade- labor or ploughed. We 

 use oxen largely for this purpose, and, strange to say, the best 

 workers we find to be a cross with the Alderney, the result 

 being a light, wiry little animal, which goes gayly over the 

 ground, is easy to feed, and very tractable. The oxen are 

 trained by the old wooden neck-yoke ; but, when well broken, 

 work in collars, which seem more easy to them. Horses on 

 very soft land work well in wooden pattens. After the land 

 has been broken up, a good dressing of lime is to be applied to 

 it, and this, in the expressive language of the people here, 

 " boils the bog" that is, the lime causes the vegetable matter, 

 formerly half decomposed, to become converted into excellent 

 manure. This leaves the soil sweetened by the neutralization 

 of its acids, and in a condition pretty easily broken up by the 

 chain-harrow ; or, what is better still, by Randall's American 

 revolving harrow. 



" Good herbage will grow on bog thus treated, but as much 

 as possible should at once be put into root-crops, with farm- 

 yard manure for potatoes and turnips. The more lime you 

 give the better will be your crop, and treated thus, there is no 

 doubt that even during the first year land so reclaimed will 

 yield remunerative crops. People ask, " But will not the 

 whole thing go back to bog ?" Of course it will if not kept 

 under proper rotation, which we find to be one of five years 

 namely, roots followed by oats, laid down with clover and 

 grass seed, which remain for two years. After being broken up 

 a second time, the land materially improves and becomes doubly 

 valuable. I have no doubt that all bog-lands may be thus re- 

 claimed, but it is up-hill work and not remunerative to attempt 

 the reclamation of bogs that are more than four feet in depth. 



