166 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



efficient husbandry is perfectly practicable, even 

 now ; but these intervales are generally the property 

 of many owners; are cut up by roads and fences; 

 and are held at high prices : so that I will simply 

 pass them by, and take for illustration the " Pine 

 Barrens " of Southern New-Jersey, merely observing 

 that what I say of them is equally applicable, with 

 slight modifications, to large portions of Long Island, 

 Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolines. 



The "Pine Barrens" of New-Jersey are a marine 

 deposit of several hundred feet in depth, mainly sand, 

 with which more or less clay is generally intermingled, 

 while there are beds and even broader stretches of 

 this material nearly or quite pure; the clay some- 

 times underlying the sand at a depth of 10 to 30 or 

 40 inches. Yast deposits of muck or leaf-mold, often 

 of many acres in extent and from two to twenty feet 

 in depth, are very common ; so that hardly any por- 

 tion of the dry or sandy land is two miles distant 

 from one or more of them,, while some is usually 

 much nearer ; and half the entire region is underlaid 

 by at least one stratum of the famous marl (formed 

 of the decomposed bones of gigantic marine monsters 

 long ago extinct) which has already played so import- 

 ant and beneficent a part in the renovation and fer- 

 tilization of large districts in Monmouth, Burlington, 

 Salem, and other counties. 



Let us suppose now that a farmer of ample means 

 and generous capacity should purchase four hundred 

 acres of these " barrens," with intent to produce 



