360 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



in stacks, than spread upon the marsh, after it is sufficiently 

 dry to keep ; but it requires longer time for making. The low 

 marsh hay is not fully made, until it is six months or a year 

 old. If fed out when green, to cows, the milk will taste of it ; 

 if to working cattle, it will weaken them ; but when kept till 

 fully cured, it will make good butter, and support the ox at the 

 plough. As cattle require a portion of salt, and will not thrive 

 well without it, the cheapest and easiest way of supplying 

 them, is to feed more or less with this hay, which will furnish 

 food with the salt. Every farm, within a reasonable distance, 

 ought to contain a piece of these lands. 



Our marsh lands have been very much improved by ditch- 

 ing ; but the improvement has been attributed to draining, 

 which is generally considered one and the same thing, though 

 very different as respects the effects on salt marshes. By re- 

 commending the draining of marshes to improve them, it can- 

 not be expected that those whose lands are already too dry, 

 would think of draining, when, in fact, the high and dryest 

 parts of the marsh are most benefitted by ditching ; — as the 

 ditches are filled, or partly so, twice in twenty-four hours by 

 the tide, which cools and moistens the dry parts, and renders 

 them productive, increasing the crops more than four-fold. 



Although we have doubled, if not trebled, our crops of hay, 

 our pastures have deteriorated. Perhaps not more than half 

 the stock is now pastured in the county, certainly not in this sec- 

 tion of it, that there was fifty years ago. This diminution of 

 pasturage is attributable to various causes. In some parts of the 

 county, portions of the pasture lands have been converted into 

 house lots, gardens, and tillage. On many of our pastures, the 

 ancient oaks and other forest trees, which were reserved by our 

 fathers for shade and ornament, and were the natural defence 

 of the surface against the scorching and exhausting rays of our 

 summer sun, have been removed. 



Another, and perhaps the greatest cause of the deterioration 

 of these lands, is owing to our farmers generally having aban- 

 doned the keeping of sheep, which are the best gleaners of 

 pastures, after other stock ; readily feeding upon bushes, vines, 

 briars and other foul growth that is left by other stock, and 



