72 THE COXXECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



to make estimates for the work of the different fields, and the 

 manures and seed needed. I took with me as large a sized 

 blank-book as would comfortably go into my pocket and a lead 

 pencil. The house I lived in stood fairly well in the open. I 

 took the long front side of this house as a base line ; looking 

 along it, I located an object in the distance in the same line, 

 and walked to it, counting my steps, not pacing ; that is. not 

 taking three feet at each step, but walking naturally, for I had 

 determined by repeated trials that forty of my ordinary steps 

 made one hundred feet. As I passed along this line I noted 

 in the book those objects of interest it passed through or near 

 by and where it crossed a brook or a fence. On reaching the 

 object seen from the house, I ranged in another object farther 

 on and repeated until I had reached the outside boundary 

 of the place. I walked back over the line, confirming my notes, 

 and then located, in the same manner, an extension of this 

 line across the place in the other direction from the house. I 

 now had a base line which, in this particular case, passed 

 through the fields which had to be worked at once. I drew this 

 line on wrapping paper, adopting for a scale one-fourth inch 

 equal to ten steps, which made a plan of lOO feet to the inch. 

 Then I went to the field which I had to work first and through 

 which this line passed, and by walking along its sides and 

 diagonally across its angles, — walking over more diagonals than 

 was really necessary, in order to check this work, — I found 

 when I had plotted it on paper, that I had a map which fairly 

 well balanced and sufficiently correct to make estimates as to 

 the time needed to do the work, and the manure, seeds, etc., 

 needed for that field. Within forty-eight hours after coming 

 onto the place I was in possession of sufficient information, as 

 far as map could give it, to intelligently direct the work, and 

 by the time two weeks had gone by I had a map of each field 

 of arable ground, by simply walking over it and counting my 

 footsteps. By early summer, by the use of odd time only, I 

 had a map of the entire place, showing water courses, walls and 

 fences, woodland, orchards, pasture lands and plowed fields. I 

 had not only a map of the place as a whole, but I had a separate 

 map of every field : on these lesser maps I had written on the 

 margin an account of what was then growing there, and as 

 far as I could determine, what had sfrown on it during- the last 



