222 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



frauds at every turn wlicu we undertake to buy fertilizing 

 matter. We have endured them long enough. 



In respect to ashes, I think the effect of leached ashes is more 

 lasting tiian was suggested by the lecturer. So it is with muck. 

 I can take you to a field in my town on which an ox-cart load 

 of muck was put thirty years ago, and you can see the effects of 

 that muck to-day. I can show you anotlier field of sixteen 

 acres, one-half of which received a coating of muck thirty years 

 ago ; the field has been cultivated and manured just alike all 

 the time since, and the line between the two parts of the field 

 is just as distinct as the aisle between these seats. 



If any word of mine should induce you to use these broad 

 deposits of muck which a kind Providence has kept in reserve 

 for us through so many centuries, I should think my time well 

 expended and yours not lost. Many people of my acquaint- 

 ance have, during the dry time the past autumn, gone into the 

 swamps, and I think that thousands and tens of thousands more 

 loads of muck have been carted out this fall than ever before in 

 a single season. Notwithstanding some prominent speakers 

 describe muck as good for nothing except as an absorbent, I 

 think you cannot do a better thing on your farms than to use 

 the largest quantities of good muck that you can lay your 

 hands on. I do not see but that it operates just as well upon 

 granite lands or upon clay subsoil as upon sandy soil. Peat 

 has a most happy effect upon all sorts of plants. If I have a 

 rose-bush that I want to push ahead of all its neighbors, I go 

 and dig up the earth around it, and put in a quantity of dried 

 peat. I have not hesitated to declare, at the numerous conven- 

 tions I have attended, that every cord of muck placed upon the 

 soil was worth two dollars, and it does not cost that to get it. I 

 do not think a farmer can do better, or can enhance his profits 

 more than by the use of good meadow muck. 



Mr. Barnard, of Worcester. I am glad the gentleman has 

 broached the subject of meadow muck. Forty-five years ago 

 I went on my farm, which was very much run out, and only 

 able to keep four cows and a yoke of oxen. I commenced 

 digging out muck and putting it into my barnyard and hog-pen, 

 and used it very freely. I had one barn 50 by 36, and another 

 40 by 30, and about twenty tons of hay to put in. At the end of 

 three years, I filled the two barns to the ridge-pole and one 



