326 PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 



breaks, weeds, and any green stuff I could get, piled as follows : 

 — first, a laying of muck, then a coat of grass, &c., that made 

 it five inches thick when pressed together ; and continued on, 

 — a layer first of one, then the other, till I had used up my 

 grass, &c., covered all over well with muck, soil, &c., put in 

 two casks of lime, and about fifty bushels of ashes, leached and 

 unleached, and some rich scrapings from around my buildings. 

 As I put up the heap, I wet well from a water hole near my 

 barn ; I have shovelled it over once ; it has rotted well. I have 

 also made a pile of twenty-five loads of muck, mixed with one 

 hundred and twelve bushels of ashes, put up in the same man- 

 ner as the above pile, with the omission of water. I have made 

 three other piles, making fifteen loads of rich soil around 

 my barn, — weeds, grass, &c., very good manure for a top- 

 dressing ; the remainder I made in my yards, with my cattle, 

 sheep, hogs, &c. The muck I used, was dug and piled in 1848. 

 I have this year carted out and piled as much as two -hundred 

 and fifty loads of muck, for use the next season. 



MiDDLEBOROUGH, Oct. 27, 1849. 



Nathan Whitman' s Statement. 



The land on which I raised my corn was green sward. Af- 

 ter spreading on the sward thirty loads of good manure, I 

 ploughed it with three cattle, six to seven inches deep ; then 

 furrowed it without disturbing the sod ; then I put into the 

 furrow twelve loads of compost manure, dropping at from fifteen 

 to twenty inches apart, and dropped the kernels in each hill, 

 the rows being three feet six inches the other way. This was 

 ploughed and planted from the 25th to the 28th of May. The 

 1st of July I went through with the cultivator twice in one 

 row, in the heat of the day so as to destroy the weeds ; then I 

 hoed it without raising any hill, one day and a half labor. 

 After haying in August, went through and pulled up the weeds ; 

 did not cut my top stalks. The result, — your supervisor com- 

 mittee harvested 66| lbs. on one rod, making 141 f| bushel on 

 the acre. The seed corn was smutty white. 



East Bridgewater, Oct. 1849. 



