On Salt Marsh. 277 



heavy crops, for a few years, without imparting more du- 

 rable fecundity. This surface being exhausted by tillage, 

 must be enriched by manure, or by deep ploughing, or 

 by natural causes, which will gradually embody the ve- 

 getable surface with the mud beneath ; — and thus I ac- 

 count for the deterioration of our crop, and the means of 

 recruiting the soil. 



At this period of husbandry in salt meadows, various 

 manures, and particularly lime, would be useful; the 

 mud from ditches, sand from the fast land or beach, 

 dung, and almost every manure would accelerate de- 

 cay, and compress and strengthen such soil as had 

 not a sufficient portion of mud. The marsh improved 

 by Mr. Brinton and myself, has, in every part, a solid 

 substratum of blue mud ; and the whole body having be- 

 come sufficiently compact, for. horses and oxen to walk 

 in a plough furrow, the rich soil from below is to be 

 turned up ; for where that has been done, and time al- 

 lowed for the salt and sour nature to pass away, the 

 crops are equal to any that I have heard of, and supe- 

 rior to most. They are not, however, so certain as in 

 upland. The great body of our meadow was harrowed ; 

 and that is sufficient, nay better than ploughing, in the 

 first years after the enclosure is made ; but some lots 

 were ploughed for the sake of experiment, and though 

 they did not yield at first, as those did which were mere- 

 ly harrowed, we now begin to see the advantage of the 

 operation, in giving firmness to the soil. But we should 

 have been better recompensed (the benefit of the expe- 

 riment apart) had we depended on the harrow alone for 

 the first five years, during which the crops were good ; 

 and it would have been soon enough to plough, when 



