34 



the New England States. Several successful experiments in 

 swamp-drainage and securing land from overflow have been 

 tried in California, thus already improving some 200,000 acres 

 of land on our Pacific coast. The diking in and reclaiming the 

 salt marshes along the seashore is worthy of increased attention. 

 In Marshfield, Massachusetts, over 1400 acres of salt marsh 

 have been already greatly improved by shutting off the tides 

 of the ocean, at a cost of over $30,000. If the success expected 

 attends this experiment, it will deserve to be repeated on a 

 broad scale along our seashore. The improvement of moors 

 and wet lands by spreading layers of sand is too familiar to 

 need description. Tile drainage, though but recently intro- 

 duced in this country, is rapidly growing in favor. Though 

 more expensive than surface drainage, it produces far better 

 results. In this way large tracts of wet land have been 

 recently improved, especially in the Western States. The 

 statistics from a single State will indicate the general progress 

 in this direction. In 1876 less than five million feet of tiles 

 were sold in Illinois : in 1877 over fourteen million feet were 

 sold. 



The extent of soil depletion in many of the Southern 

 States, according to Dr. Tichenor of Alabama, is " painful 

 and humiliating. The fields of Middle Georgia were once 

 the richest cotton lands of the South. After wearing them 

 out, the planters went to Alabama, and there repeated the 

 same process of exhaustion. Now the line of greatest pro- 

 ductionlhas receded from the seaboard to Texas. Those who 

 thus'carelessly strip the soil of its wealth are traitors to those 

 who come after them. This ignorant plundering of the soil is 

 an evil which threatens our national stability. One cause of 

 the Jong continued fertility of China and Japan is the care 

 with which every element of the soil is husbanded." 



The practicability and even the possibility of reclaiming the 

 sand-barrens of the Atlantic States is so generally doubted, 

 that it is needful to show what has been done in this direction 

 under conditions the most unfavorable and where it was confi- 

 dently predicted nothing could be made to grow. The feasi- 

 bility of reclaiming our barren wastes, is proved by many facts 

 abroad and at home. Our Atlantic sand plains were once cov- 



