No. 4.] INUNDATED LANDS. 385 



forward with the problem, with a view to determining how 

 far the same or similar methods may be made to serve in 

 rearing other crops. If we can show the way whereby deep 

 bogs may be made valuable fields for the application of high- 

 grade tillage, we shall make the most notable contribution 

 to agriculture which has been won in our century. This 

 improvement would clearly be in the line of our present 

 advance in the tillage arts. We are now trending towards 

 intensive methods of cultivation. To serve the needs of the 

 modern methods, it is in the first place necessary to secure 

 a better control of the water level in the soil and of the 

 chemical constituents of the materials of which it is com- 

 posed. It is not unlikely that in the immediate future it 

 will be found advantageous to possess areas where the tilled 

 materials afforded by nature consist altogether of sandy 

 matter, to which art will add from time to time the mineral 

 substances which the crops require. Manifestly, these con- 

 ditions, along with the regulable water supply, can best 

 be secured in the manner above described. 



The Marine Marshes of Massachusetts. 



Along the sea-coast line of this Commonwealth we find a 

 scattered fringe of inundated lands which are winnable to agri- 

 culture, and which, as experience shows, may afford fields of 

 great agricultural value. These deposits, which in all cases 

 are surmounted by high tides and laid bare at low water, are 

 denominated marine marshes. Although at first sight these 

 coastal deposits appear to be very nearly related to the fresh- 

 water swamp3, they really constitute a very distinct class of 

 our inundated lands. 



The most characteristic and important features of the 

 marine marshes may be briefly described as follows : They 

 are formed in the main through the action of certain peculiar 

 species of grasses which have the habit of growing with their 

 roots in ordinary sea water. They are never occupied by 

 arborescent vegetation or by any plants of perennial tops, 

 except where the waters of the sea have been excluded from 

 the field by natural or artificial action. Although the sur- 

 face of the deposit for some depth below the air may be com- 

 posed of fibrous peaty matter, there is never any accumula- 



