219 



5. Ninety-seven and a half bushels, or at the rate of sixty- 

 five bushels to the acre, have been raised in Townsend on an 

 acre and a half The particulars of the cultivation I have not 

 been able to obtain. 



6. Buckwheat is seldom cultivated. One of the best farm- 

 ers in the county obtained, in one case, ninety-six bushels on 

 three acres. This was upon an intervale meadow on the Mer- 

 rimack river, considered an inferior portion. The production 

 in the county is however so limited that it is hardly entitled to 

 a place among the crops grown. 



7. Potatoes are raised as matter of course by all the farmers 

 in the county for family use, and by the market-gardeners in the 

 vicinity of the large towns for sale. 



In Dunstable, the average yield is rated at 150 to 200 bush- 

 els. In Tyngsborough, one farmer rates his crops at 200 bush- 

 els to the acre; another at 300 bushels. In Chelmsford, a 

 farmer reports having raised 490 bushels to the acre. They 

 are often planted upon greensward newly broken up, and fre- 

 quently follow corn as the second crop in the rotation. 



A Middlesex farmer reports having made an experiment in 

 the cultivation of potatoes with two different kinds of manure. 

 In one field he applied " a compost manure of a year old, made 

 up of about one half of clear cow and horse dung ; and the 

 other half of the best meadow mud, and put in the hill the 

 same quantity that was used for corn." In another field he 

 used " coarse and long dung, being the moist and newly made 

 manure from the barn-yard and cellar, with a good mixture of 

 old refuse hay and straw and nothing else." The field planted 

 with the coarse manure produced a third more potatoes than 

 that planted with the old manure. 



Early potatoes are cultivated with great pains in the vicinity 

 of Boston, where, at their first coming, they sometimes com- 

 mand fifty cents a peck. I have known six hundred dollars 

 obtained from two acres of early potatoes, but such a case is very 

 extraordinary. The earliest kind in this case are selected and 

 laid upon a bed of hot manure from the stable, early in the 



