154 MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 



chopping and hauling the trees, and was burned on the ground 

 in May. Two sets of Irishmen, used to paring meadows, came 

 to look at it, but expressed themselves afeard of the stumps. 

 One set offered to cut up the surface for eighty dollars, and the 

 use of oxen to pull out the stumps and large roots. When told 

 that the soil was miry and could be entered upon with no other 

 team than a horse wearing rackets, they declined the job en- 

 tirely. The other set offered to venture upon it for one hun- 

 dred dollars. I cut the acre in August, without the assistance 

 of Irish labor, and found an average day's work to be four 

 rods, leaving the stumps of one foot diameter and larger, but 

 chopping the roots close from the same, so that they were after- 

 wards easily turned over with a lever. I reckoned labor and 

 board one dollar per day. The expense of piling up and 

 burning the turf and small roots, piling the large roots and 

 sunken trees, and carting off, turning over the stumps and sled- 

 ding them off in winter, together with levelling the surface, 

 was forty dollars. A ditch was dug on every side, but the 

 muck taken therefrom paid for that. The soil is not peat, but 

 a muck of decayed wood and leaves, varying in thickness from 

 one to ten feet, restmg on a subsoil like the adjoining upland, 

 of coarse gravel and stones. The cost of the acre when 

 cleared was as follows, viz : — 



Value of land for growing wood, ten dollars per acre, .f 10 00 



Paring the surface with bog hoes and axes, - - 40 00 



Burning, clearing of stumps, wood, &c., - - 40 00 



Burning brush before paring, - - _ _ 1 00 



Whole cost, - - - - - - - |91 00 



Credit. — Value of large roots and old wood, - - 20 00 



The stumps are worth cutting and splitting for fire-wood 

 and no more. 



This leaves $71 as the cost of the land cleared and levelled, 

 ready for a crop. I planted potatoes this spring, thirty hills to 

 a rod. The roots grew near the surface, and were considerably 

 injured by the excessive heat and drought of July. The crop, 

 however, is one hundred and sixty bushels to the acre, one 



