202 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



three loads clear from the cows. It may be that we would 

 apply the cow manure too thickly, and thereby it would be 

 injurious to the crop ; or, if you put the cow manure very near 

 the surface on ploughed lands, if it is very rich, not composted 

 well, you will find it will dry up, and there it will lie inert, and 

 your crop will be very little benefited by it the first year, at any 

 rate. 



It seems to me that this use of sand is only the loss of one 

 carting. If you cart it into your barn cellar, you have got to 

 cart it out again, and we all know sand is pretty heavy to cart. 

 It may be an absorbent, and may be beneficial, but we find in 

 our neighborhood a yellow loam that is immediately below the 

 surface of the pure, white gravelly sand, two or three feet, and 

 cart that on to our meadows, and it is almost as good as 

 manure. I have driven by, all summer, two lots, belonging to 

 one man, one of which he manured with barn manure, and the 

 other with sods, which he stole from the waste land — of which 

 there are thousands of acres in the neighborhood. They 

 are grand mowing lands, and on one he carted this poor, 

 sandy soil, which is on high lands, which you would think 

 would not support the grasshoppers, and he had as good a 

 second crop upon that piece as he did upon that next to it, 

 which he dressed with barn manure. If that be a fact, what is 

 the use of carrying the soil into the barn cellar and then carting- 

 it out again ? I would cart all but very ricli sods in as absorb- 

 ents, but I don't think it is of any great benefit to cart sand 

 into a barn cellar. I would put it upon the meadows without 

 carting it in ; then I would compost my manure with peat 

 muck, which is valuable in itself, and if I had any high land, 

 put that on, and it will produce as good a crop exactly as if it 

 was all clear cow manure. For instance, I have in my mind a 

 spot of land of half an acre, that three years ago was barren 

 sand. Right below it, ten rods off, is a peat hole, in a very 

 beautiful mowing lot. The man digs some of that peat out 

 every year, and carts it across the highway upon this barren 

 sand to dry, and that lot, in three years, has come into mowing, 

 and gives a good crop. Nothing in the world but muck has 

 done it. That strikes me as evidence that peat is very valua- 

 ble. I think it is the best material to compost with that I have 

 ever seen. My method is to collect the peat and compost the 



