232 APPENDIX. 



good merchantable hay to the acre, nearly double the crop 

 produced by the same lands last year. And one fact induces 

 me to think, that being spread on the ice, as above mentioned, 

 a portion of these ashes was washed away by the spring freshet. 

 The fact from which I infer this, is, that a run below, over 

 which the water coming from the meadow on which the larg- 

 est part of these ashes were spread flows, produced more than 

 double the quantity of hay, and that of a very superior quality 

 to what had been ever known to grow on the same land be- 

 fore. 



Seventy bushels of these ashes, together with a quantity not 

 exceeding thirty bushels of mixed coal and wood ashes made 

 by my kitchen and parlor fires, were mixed with my barn ma- 

 nure, derived from one horse kept in "stable during the winter 

 months, one cow kept through the winter, and one pair of ox- 

 en employed almost daily on the road and in the woods, but 

 fed in the barn one hundred days. This manure was never 

 measured, but knowing how it was made, by the droppings and 

 litter or bedding of these cattle, farmers can estimate the quan- 

 tity with a good degree of correctness. These ashes and this 

 manure were mixed with a sufficient quantity of the mud 

 above mentioned by forking it over three times, to manure 

 three acres of corn and potatoes, in hills four feet by about 

 three feet apart, giving a good shovelfull to the hill. More 

 than two-thirds of this was grass land, which produced last year 

 about half a ton of hay to the acre, broken up by the plough 

 in April. The remainder was cropped last year without being 

 well manured, with corn and potatoes. Gentlemen, you have 

 seen the crop growing and matured, and I leave it to you to 

 say whether or not the crop on this land would have been bet- 

 ter had it been dressed with an equal quantity of pure, well 

 rotted barn manure. For my own part, I believe it would not, 

 but that this experiment proves that peat mud thus managed, 

 is equal if not superior to the same quantity of any other sub- 

 stance in common use as a manure among us; which, if it be 

 a fact, is a fact of immense value to the farmers of New Eng- 

 land. By the knowledge and use of it, our comparatively bar- 

 ren soils may be made to equal or excel in productiveness the 

 virgin prairies of the West. There were many hills in which 



