196 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. Brown. Yes, sir. That land is supplied with vegetable 

 matter already, and they apply sand or silicates. 



Mr. Thatcher. I tiiink we are better provided, up in Berk- 

 shire County, with these muck beds, or peat beds, than some 

 other parts of the State, on account of our lying between eleva- 

 tions, where have been formed, I think, as Mr. Brown has said, 

 our best peat beds. 



There are different ways in which we can prepare peat, and 

 some very simple ways, perhaps not thought of by many. We 

 have now arrived at that point where most of our farmers have 

 underground cellars to their barns. Years ago, when I com- 

 menced farming, we did not have these cellars, as we do now. 

 Our stables then were on a level with the ground. Perhaps 

 people now have their stables in the cellars, and do not use, as 

 they may use, this muck to save the urine in their stables. It 

 has been my practice, for twenty years, to take up, twice a year, 

 the floors where my cattle and horses stand, unless those floors 

 are over my cellars, and dig out under them to the depth of two 

 or two and a half feet, filling up under these floors with this 

 peat muck. I remove it in the fall, and also in the spring ; at 

 any rate, twice a year under my horses. The cattle not being 

 in the stable so much in the summer, it is not necessary to 

 remove it in the fall under the stable -wliere the cattle are. I 

 can call to mind an instance where I put some of this muck 

 that had been lying under my horse stable six months, upon a 

 a piece of grass land, and after I had put it on it looked exactly 

 as if fire had run over it and burned the grass, the muck was so 

 strong, with nothing but the urine from those horses. I put 

 this dressing on after I had taken my crop of grass from the 

 ground, and the next year I had a very heavy crop of grass. I 

 have never experienced any difficulty, and certainly the strength 

 of this muck showed me how much we lose in not using this 

 means to absorb these droppings. 



Where I now live I have none of these muck beds, but I have 

 them within about a mile of me, and I have made a contract, 

 within a week, for a year, to draw muck from there, at twenty 

 cents a load, and I expect to haul a large amount this winter, 

 where I can get at it next summer. 



Tlien we have had, near where I now live, a lake, which has 

 been a reservoir, but the dam has been raised, so that it is 



