62 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



club never heard of it, judging from the reported cases. Mr. 

 Cole was once told that in a certain case there was some, but 

 that it was under the loam or surface-soil, a thing to be excluded 

 at Barnstable altogether. There was none near the vines at 

 South Hadley, as Mr. Ripley declared, that town being some 

 sixty miles from the sea. Mr. Low, in his lot, used sand on a 

 part of it, having been led to it by the public prints, but there 

 is no perceptible difference in the appearance of the vines where 

 it was used and where not. The inference is therefore irresist- 

 ible, that sand is not indispensable certainly, and probably, not 

 necessary at all. 



But it is time to consider the second inquiry, viz : whether it 

 would be profitable to cultivate cranberries upon high land; and 

 it cannot take much time to answer it. If the minimum quan- 

 tity with Mr. Hall was seventy bushels per acre, and Mr. Bates 

 has easily procured four hundred bushels, and if, according to 

 Mr. Cole, two hundred bushels is a medium crop, what other 

 vegetable, at even one dollar a bushel, begins to compare with 

 it for profit? For it must be recollected that no manure is ne- 

 cessary from beginning to end ; and after the vines once cover 

 the ground (and this appears to be in from three to five years,) 

 no further labor is necessary other than that of gathering the 

 berries, and that at an expense of about twenty cents per bushel. 

 All cultivators, however, lay it down as important, that the cat- 

 tle should be kept off, and not allowed to trample upon them. 

 Here there will necessarily be a loss of fall feed, necessary to be 

 taken into the account in making up the bill of profit and loss. 



It may be properly stated, too, on the authority of Mr. Worth, 

 a member of the New York club, that " the cranberry of Russia 

 is larger than that of England, but both of them are scarcely 

 half the size of those raised by Mr. Bates, procured by trans- 

 planting from low grounds to high, and of much inferior flavor." 

 If Mr. Worth is accurate in this statement, — and there is no known 

 reason for doubting it, — it is not extravagant to suppose that even 

 foreign markets may open for the American cranberry. Might 

 it not have been a belief in the superiority of the American, to 

 that of the English, that led Sir Joseph Banks to procure the 

 former for his garden culture 1 



