AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 237 



costs about $8. The buyer removes the top soil, 

 and plunges into a deposit ten to thirty feet deep, 

 and goes down until stopped by water. In other 

 cases he digs on high ground, and obtains more 

 marl at less cost. The farmer applies from five to 

 twenty-five loads to each acre, according to the ex 

 hausted condition of his land. The latter is uni 

 formly benefited by the application. Facts of this 

 description are unanswerable ; while the statistics of 

 the potato crop are remarkable enough to secure 

 attention from the most indifferent observer. 



Another singular resource for enriching these 

 lands has been discovered and applied. A large 

 crab, known as horse-foot, sea-spider, and king-crab, 

 abounds along the sea-coast, but nowhere in such 

 numbers as on the Delaware Bay. In June, they 

 come on shore in numbers absolutely incredible, for 

 the purpose of depositing their eggs, covering the 

 beach for a distance of forty miles, a moving, crowd 

 ing, jostling cavalcade, looking as if the beach 

 itself were a living expanse. For weeks they are 

 to be found upon the beach. A million of these 

 unsightly creatures could be gathered in a single 

 mile. The sand is so thickly covered with their 

 eggs, that they are shovelled up by wagon loads, 

 and carried off as food for hogs and chickens. The 

 hogs feed and fatten on the whole crabs, whose 

 average weight is four pounds. During the season 

 when this spontaneous offering of the sea is made 

 to man, the farmers near the ocean come there and 

 collect the living crabs in huge piles, where they 

 cover them with soil, thus composting them into a 



