HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY. 253 



expense and labor to be brought under cultivation, and which 

 would yield returns of profitable crops but slowly, were suf- 

 fered to remain wholly unimproved, or were partially reclaimed, 

 so far that they would yield some pasture, or some coarse grass 

 for the scythe. 



This mode of procedure might answer well enough while 

 there was an abundance of good land easily reclaimed, while 

 the population was sparse and the consumers comparatively 

 few. But as the population increases, and the demand for 

 agricultural products increases, the producers must change their 

 mode in this respect, and must put under cultivation a greater 

 amount of fertile land in order to meet that demand. 



Now it is well known to those who have taken into consid- 

 eration the unimproved land in the several counties in the 

 State, amounting by the returns in the aggregate to seven hun- 

 dred and fifteen thousand two hundred and ninety-four acres, 

 that a very large part of this land, amounting, by the same 

 returns, to four hundred fifty-seven thousand two hundred and 

 sixty-five acres, grown up to wood and bushes, or under the 

 dominion of water, might be reclaimed and made productive. 



Some land of this character has indeed been partially 

 reclaimed ; but trees and bushes, roots and stumps, stones in 

 place and out of place, obstruct the scythe and the rake. The 

 ground is too wet and soft for the plough and even for the cart. 

 The grass is of but little value for the purpose of nutrition, 

 and if mowed, is used chiefly for litter. 



But there are extensive tracts of low land in a still worse con- 

 dition, covered with sedge and brakes, bogs and moss, or so 

 tangled with bushes and trees, that as one remarked to the com- 

 mittee, a " grey rabbit could not find his way through it." 

 Here gad-flies and bottle-flies, musquetoes and midges have their 

 native home. Here frogs and lizards, the water-snake, and, it 

 may be, the copper-head, have their haunts. Prom it, evapora- 

 tion chills the neighborhood, and malaria generates disease and 

 death. You step on it and it quakes beneath your feet. 



For land in this condition the true remedies are draining, 

 and PLOUGHING. The first is essential to the second. The 

 second is as essential to success as to the object aimed at in the 



