180 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Expenses of reclaiming- : — 



Cutting- and burning brush and bogs, . . $20 00 



Ditching, 30 rods of hard pan, . . . 50 00 



Digging stumps and roots, . . . . 10 00 



Carting sand, 30 00 



Ploughing and harrowing, $8 ; seeds, f 8, . 16 00 

 20 loads of compost manure, . . . . 20 00 

 Planting, hoeing and harvesting, $18 ; inci- 

 dentals, $10, 28 00 



-$1T4 00 



Yalue of crops : — 



In 1855. Oats and hay, . . . . f 14 00 



'56-7. First crop of hay, 9 tons, at $7, . 63 00 



Second crop of hay, 2 tons, at $"6, . 12 00 



40 bushels Indian corn, at 90 cts., 36 00 



1| tons of corn fodder, . , 8 00 



15 bushels of oats, at 50 cts., . 7 50 



160 bushels of potatoes, at 50 cts., 80 00 



-$220 50 



The present value of the land is $300. 

 Amherst, November 15, 1857. 



FRANKLIN. 



Statement of David A. and 3Ioses Fisk. 



We wish to present to you, and if worth a place in jonr 

 report, to the owners of similar land, as we have often been 

 requested to, a brief description of an experiment we have 

 in progress, of changing an unhealthy, sunken swamp to a fer- 

 tile meadow. It contains thirty or more acres, receives the 

 wash from several hundred acres of ujdand, and is surroiuided 

 with large springs. A large stream of water runs from it dur- 

 ing the wet season ; across which a dam was built, making it a 

 reservoir for a mill, and overflowing it during the fall, winter 

 and spring, for a long time, the mud so soft and deep that a 

 pole thirty feet long has been run down the whole length with- 

 out reaching the bottom. A man could go on the most of it by 

 stepping on the bogs, and by springing upon it could shake the 



