ASA T. NEWHALL'S ADDRESS. 359 



as far as my experience enables me to speak, is to clear the 

 surface of grasses and bushes, and cover with sand or gravel, 

 sufficient to kill the native growth of vegetation ; then manure, 

 and sow with rye and grass, if in the autumn, or with oats and 

 grass, if in the spring or summer ; for if the grain fails, the 

 roots of the rye or oats will strengthen the surface, and aid the 

 grass in getting root. 



These lands, improved in manner aforesaid, without plough- 

 ing, continue productive without any additional expense, much 

 longer than those which have been ploughed ; the decomposi- 

 tion of the original growth, which has been covered by the 

 top-dressing, furnishing food for the cultivated grasses. By an 

 experiment I made some twenty years since, by the above 

 mode, on one acre, I obtained good crops of hay for eight 

 years in succession, without any dressing ; the ninth season, 

 the crop was somewhat less than a ton ; it was then ploughed 

 in the fall of that year, and planted the first day of the follow- 

 ing June. The sand and peat had become well mixed, was 

 very mellow and easy to till. The acre produced fifty bushels 

 of corn — having one row of potatoes around the margin. The 

 next year, it produced about forty bushels of barley. 



We have an abundance of these lands, as yet in a state of 

 nature, which, if reclaimed and rendered as productive as they 

 might be, and our dry lands sufficiently manured from our 

 peat meadows and swamps, few, if any parts of the State, of 

 the same area, would produce more good hay than our own 

 county. 



Our salt marshes, which have been a reliable source for stock 

 fodder, have, within a few years, been thought less of than 

 formerly. The cattle fed upon the hay grown from them, 

 have been represented by a gentleman who stands high in our 

 society, as the successors of Pharaoh's lean kine. The loss of 

 its reputation, as good fodder for cattle has been owing, in my 

 opinion, to its having been fed out before it was fully cured. 

 It Avas formerly the custom to let our low marsh hay lie in 

 swath, from six to eight days, to make. Recently it has, and 

 I think with more economy, been put up, the weather permit- 

 ting, in less than half that time, for it is much better to be cured 



