180 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



for farther improvement ; and on the virgin prairies of the 

 West wc have seen the torch applied to the stacks of straw in 

 order to get it out of the way ; atid in many places the piles of 

 manure around the barns are considered a nuisance, and if 

 Hercules' mode of cleaning the Augean stables were possible, it 

 would doubtless be resorted to. "We have seen, during the past 

 summer, a sewer constructed in one of our large villages with 

 its mouth terminating in a brook, so that the refuse which 

 should go to fertilizing the surrounding country is now carried 

 to that great reservoir of fertility, the ocean. The inevitable 

 absorption by the sea of the fertilizing material of the land 

 would seem to be sufficient, without our adding to the loss by 

 turning our sewers in that direction. Possibly the upheavings 

 of nature, in the course of time, may bring to the surface the 

 vast deposits now being made in the ocean ; but it is not worth 

 while to make too large investments where the returns are in 

 such an uncertain future. We think we are speaking within 

 bounds when we say that not half the resources of manure, even 

 in our favored New England, are as yet developed. The object 

 of the present paper is briefly to allude to some of these unde- 

 veloped or partially developed resources, and, if possible, to stim- 

 ulate to a more careful husbanding of the life-blood of the farm ; 

 and if allusion is made to the writer's own experience, it is 

 hoped the reference will not be attributed to self-glorification, 

 but to a desire to make that experience available for the benefit 

 of others. 



The first resource we will mention is the muck swamp. This 

 is a reservoir of vegetable matter, the slow deposit for centuries 

 of wood-leaves, moss and herbage, for the most part submerged, 

 so as to prevent rapid decay. Possibly these muck swamps are 

 the incipient states of future fields of coal, and may by pressure 

 and heat bo converted into that concentrated form of carbon. 

 Be this as it may, they seem to have been reserved by a kind 

 Providence to supply the rapid waste of vegetable matter which 

 always occurs in dry, cultivated lands. As the coal-fields are 

 the great wood-houses of nature, so the muck swamps are her 

 great manure-beds ; and as the development of the one has 

 vastly increased the manufactures of the world, so the use of 

 the other tends to supply the demand for the products of the soil 

 which manufactures create. These swamps were formerly 



