66 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



after all, most important, and most carefully to be considered 

 by a majority of farmers. It is perhaps too early, as yet, to 

 determine what ma}- be the final result in that of Mr. Latham. 

 By the account included in his statement, it would seem that 

 the grass already grown upon the lot is equal in value to about 

 seventy-eight per cent, of the expenditure upon it. But this 

 result is reached by the entire omission of any charge for the 

 very considerable expense incurred in ditching, an omission 

 based upon his belief that the cost of this part of the opera- 

 tion has been reimbursed in the improvement of his adjoining 

 upland by the application of the material taken from the 

 ditches. This view of the case will not receive the universal 

 assent of formers, many of whom are convinced, some of them 

 by hard-earned experience, that the principal, if not the only 

 benefit derived from the application of peat to uplands, is 

 through a possible mechanical loosening of the soil, for which 

 purpose it is, perhaps, equal in value to sawdust, spent tan, 

 bog-meadow hay, and other non-adhesive,- and equally non- 

 fertilizing substances. But the drift formation of the Old 

 Colony rarely needs special applications in this direction 

 beyond the judicious use of the plough, and other pulveriz- 

 ing implements, for which neither sawdust, tan nor peat can be 

 recommended as a reliable substitute. 



These suggestions, as to the slight value of peat as a fertil- 

 izer, are intended to apply only to pure peat (that is, to a 

 deposit of decomposed vegetable matter unmixed with silt or 

 earthy substances, from the wash of uplands or from other 

 sources), applied in its natural and unmodified condition. 

 The possibilities of chemistry, in changing the nature of this 

 particular substance, are not now under consideration. 

 Whether a neutral salt of any value as a fertilizer can be 

 obtained by combining the acid in peat with any base, is a 

 question on which experts differ, as they do on most other 

 questions respecting which their opinions are required. It is 

 hardly probable that such a result can be secured at any com- 

 paratively reasonable cost. If this disparaging, and, agricult- 

 urally speaking, somewhat uncanonical estimate of the value 

 of peat, when applied to uplands, is correct, there can be 

 little inducement to grapple with it in its native bed, with 

 a view to making it a productive soil. It is true that, by 



