252 HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY. 



ored, and produced quite as large a crop in harvest time, as 

 that grown over the hog-yard manure. 



I have tried it also in the hill for potatoes, and find it fully- 

 equal to the best hog-yard manure. 1 claim for this manure 

 the following advantages: 



First it is cheap. Horse manure alone is a miserable fertil- 

 izer, and this, excepting the wood ashes, is the only substance 

 of any value, that enters into the composition. Combined in 

 the way stated, it helps to form a valuable manure. Loam and 

 washings from the road side, cost nothing but the labor of 

 getting them. All the refuse substances around the house, 

 cellar and yard, are got rid of as nuisances and converted to a 

 valuable purpose. The wood ashes lose nothing of their 

 value combined in this way, but rather are rendered more use- 

 ful by imparting their virtues to other substances, making a 

 compost more fertilizing than ashes could be alone. 



Again, as a matter of cleanness and convenience, this com- 

 post heap is of great advantage. How often do we see around 

 farm houses and farm yards, accumulations of substances ren- 

 dering the premises filthy and unsightly. The compost heap 

 receives all these otherwise useless accumulations, and greedily 

 drinks in all the slops and washings that otherwise would be 

 forming dirty and offensive drains about the premises ; but in 

 this way. they are fitly and economically disposed of. 



Leverett, Od., 1851. 



Reclaimed Meadows. 



The committee, in examining five tracts in Hadley, Amherst 

 and Belchertown, have had their attention called to the impor- 

 tance of this subject generally in its bearing upon the agricul- 

 tural interest of the Commonwealth. In the history of the 

 settlement and early growth of the towns in Massachusetts, as 

 in the other states, the settlers brought into cultivation those 

 portions only of the forest land which they could subdue with 

 the greatest ease, and which would yield the quickest and 

 largest returns; while those portions which required great 



