64 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



drainage will never be perfect till this brook, with 

 that far larger one in which it is merged sixty rods 

 below me, shall have been sunk three or four feet, at 

 a further expense of at least $500. 



This bog or swamp, when I first bought into it, 

 was mainly dedicated to the use of frogs, muskrats 

 and snapping-turtles. A few small water-elms and 

 soft maples grew upon it, with swamp alder partly 

 fringing the western base of the hill east of it, where 

 the rocks which had, through thousands of years, 

 rolled from the hill, thickly covered the surface, with 

 springs bubbling up around and among them. De- 

 caying stumps and imbedded fragments of trees ar- 

 gued that timber formerly covered this marsh as 

 well as the encircling hills. A tall, dense growth of 

 blackberry briers, thoroughwort, and all manner of 

 marsh-weeds and grasses, covered the center of the 

 swamp each Summer ; but my original portion of it, 

 being too wet for these, was mainly addicted to 

 hassocks or tussocks of wiry, worthless grass; their 

 matted roots rising in hard bunches a few inches 

 above the soft, bare, encircling mud. The bog 

 ranged in depth from a few inches to five or six 

 feet, and was composed of black, peaty, vegetable 

 mold, diversified by occasional streaks of clay or 

 sand, all resting on a substratum of hard, coarse 

 gravel, out of which two or three springs bubbled 

 up, in addition to the half a dozen which poured in 

 from the east, and a tiny rivulet which (except in a 

 very dry, hot time) added the tribute of three or 



