384 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



The advantages which would be gained by converting our 

 horizontal peat bogs into garden grounds would be found in 

 two important features, — in the perfect control of the soil 

 water and the ease with which the soil could be supplied 

 with vegetable matter. Whenever the process of decay had 

 gone so far as to diminish the share of peaty matter in the 

 soil to an undesirable degree, a slight deepening of 'the tilth 

 would bring up a share of the underlying peat. In the reverse 

 way an addition of sandy matter would correct any excess 

 of muck. It is hardly necessary to state that an artificial 

 soil of this description would have to be continually 

 refreshed by the use of mineral manures. It would have in 

 general the character of the best market-garden ground in 

 Florida, where the earth is composed of peaty matter and 

 pure silicious sand, and where the fertility is mainly con- 

 tributed by mineral manures which are added from time to 

 time in the measure which experience shows to be required. 

 In the present state of high-grade gardening a soil of this 

 nature, where the moisture and vegetable matter can be 

 accurately controlled, is clearly a desideratum. It is in 

 many cases better to add by precise doses of chemical 

 manures the materials which the crops need than to use the 

 grosser barnyard fertilizers. 



The total area of the deep bogs of Massachusetts — those 

 containing peaty deposits so thick that they cannot readily 

 be won to tillage by other means than those above described 

 — probably amounts to more than a hundred thousand 

 acres, and may, on precise reckoning, be found to exceed 

 a hundred and fifty thousand acres. If this great aggregate 

 area can be brought to a state where it will have the value 

 possessed by our better class of market-garden ground, the 

 result would be an important contribution to the resources 

 of the Commonwealth. Although there are many difficul- 

 ties attendant upon improvements of this nature, the result 

 to be attained is so important as to justify systematic and 

 extended experiments. I have already noted the fact that 

 the methods of cranberry tillage, which are perhaps the 

 most notable contributions to agriculture which have been 

 made in this country, are due to the inventive skill of our 

 Massachusetts farmers. It seems fit that they should go 



