420 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



bear no comparison with corn. We must have them, at any 

 price, for the table ; but to make beef or pork, corn will be 

 found the most economical food. Saying nothing of the un- 

 certainty of the potato crop, or of the disease that now blasts 

 it, it is not, in its best estate, to be compared with corn. Our 

 soils are so much exhausted, that potatoes are not produced as 

 easily as they were fifty years ago. Farmers now think one 

 hundred bushels a pretty fair yield. Yet they have abundant 

 reasons to think that they can as easily grow fifty bushels of 

 corn on the same ground. Now we seldom find a farmer who 

 does not value one bushel of corn as high as four bushels of 

 potatoes, for fattening. 



But on comparing corn with potatoes, there are still other 

 advantages in favor of corn. The good fodder from an acre, is 

 from one to two tons. The seed costs not one twentieth part so 

 much, as for an acre of potatoes ; the labor of planting and har- 

 vesting is less ; and the soil is left sweeter and in better condi- 

 tion for after harvests. We can therefore give up the potato 

 to those who must have it for the table, hoping that it will not 

 cost so much trouble to grow it, as it has done for some years 

 past. 



Wheat cannot be grown advantageously in this part of the 

 State. There is not clay enough in the soil here for wheat. 

 Rye is a better grain for a sandy soil. When we can pro- 

 cure flour at six dollars per barrel, we lose nothing by purchas- 

 ing our supplies. 



I am told that some attempts have been made here to dyke 

 the salt meadows and extend the upland. This has succeeded 

 well in some places. In Middlesex county we have done 

 much to reclaim our bog meadows. We find that on many 

 farms one load of manure will produce twice as much hay on 

 these bogs, as on high land. These bogs are first well drained ; 

 and top-dressings must be applied occasionally to keep out the 

 wild grasses. These bogs are subdued in different modes, ac- 

 cording to circumstances. Sometimes we bury up all the nat- 

 ural grasses Avith gravelly loam, carted on in' the autumn or in 

 winter. Such mixtures are always beneficial. 



There seems to be no obstacle in the way of growing apples 



