122 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



&quot; Ye aint a gwine to put that on tu the land, be ye, 

 Squire Bunker ? &quot; inquired Jake with an astonished look. 



&quot;I shouldn t wonder if I did.&quot; 



This conversation with my neighbors, two years ago, 

 shows the general impression about guano in any commu 

 nity, when it is first introduced. I had got it to try an 

 experiment on some poor land, that lay off a couple of 

 miles from my house. I suppose a man ought to apologize 

 for owning land so far from home, for it is certainly very 

 bad husbandry. The expense of cultivating it is nearly 

 double that of a home lot, and manuring with stable dung 

 at that distance is out of the question. The fuct is, the 

 land belongs to Mrs. Bunker, and, as it came from her fa 

 ther, she never felt like selling it. It has been used for 

 pasture ever since I can remember. For the last ten years 

 I have not been very particular about pasturing it, for 

 there was not much grass there to be eaten. It was mis 

 erable old plain land, and had once been a light sandy 

 loam, before the loam was carried off in crops. It bore 

 five-fingers and moss pretty well, was fair for pennyroyal, 

 and famous for mulleins and sweet fern. The sheep had 

 worn little paths around among these brush, and if sheep 

 have any virtue to restore exhausted land, that field never 

 found it out. I suppose all the vegetable matter that 

 grew upon an acre, if it could have been gathered, would 

 not have weighed two hundred pounds. It used to be 

 said of it, that it was too poor to bear worms and insects, 

 so that skunks had to starve or emigrate. 



We have a great deal of such land in all the old 

 States, thoroughly worn out, and not paying the interest 

 on three dollars an acre, to their present owners. They 

 are generally farmers in moderate circumstances, and have 

 no spare capital to give such land a start, and it lies idle 

 and worthless. I thought it was worth trying to give 

 this out-lot a chance to do a little better by itself and its 

 owner. My plan was to turn in green crops, a process in 



