358 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



made to increase our crops of hay by reclaiming wet meadows, 

 and carrying on to our dry, gravel lands, what was taken from 

 the ditches to drain them. Forty-seven years ago this month, 

 a young man in my neighborhood, commenced the improve- 

 ment of a piece of sunken meadow and swamp land, by drain- 

 ing, and wheeling on gravel and sand, from four to six inches 

 deep. The neighbors unitedly sneered at the undertaking, and 

 some of them inquired of his father, whether he permitted his 

 son to trade and do business for himself. The son, however, 

 having succeeded by the third year, to raise six tons of timothy 

 and foxtail, on two acres, called upon a son of one who had ridi- 

 culed the undertaking, to assist in harvesting the crop. His 

 father, on being made acquainted with the result of the experi- 

 ment, sent one of his younger sons into a swamp, and kept him 

 there during his minority. But it was many years, before much 

 was done in this branch of improvement ; and most of our farm- 

 ers thought that land that could not be ploughed, could not be 

 improved. 



Some pieces of meadow land, of shallow soil, where the 

 plough would run to or near to, the hard pan beneath, were culti- 

 vated, and made productive of rich grasses, for one or two years 

 only ; for, although they were sufficiently ditched, to lake the 

 water from the soil above the hard pan, the subsoil would retain 

 the water so long before it found its way to the drains, render- 

 ing the earth at the bottom of the roots of the grass so cold, 

 as to reproduce the natural grasses in two or three years, unless 

 it was constantly warmed with manure. But by using the 

 subsoil plough, breaking up and loosening the soil to a greater 

 depth, the draining may be facilitated. 



Our wet meadows and swamps, where the mud or peat is 

 from two to ten feet in depth, if capable of being drained at a 

 reasonable expense, are of much greater value for reclamation, 

 than those of a shallow soil ; as by sinking the ditches to a 

 proper depth, they may easily be made as dry as may be desira- 

 ble for the growth of grain, vegetables and grasses. These lands 

 of deep soil are mostly incapable of being ploughed at the com- 

 mencement of improvement, and it is bad policy so to do, where 

 they will admit of it. The most economical mode to be adopted, 



