PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 493 



quantity of short, dry feed. I have about twelve acres of 

 reclaimed swamp, where I cut about twenty tons of English 

 hay. My practice is to carry my compost from my barnyard, 

 consisting mostly of swamp mud, on to my cultivated sandy 

 soil, and as far as I can, to preserve the green manure of the 

 cattle and horses, and compost it, as soon as planting is over, 

 with sandy soil, gravel, &c., and when well prepared, put it on 

 my English peat meadow. The material furnished the hogs 

 is various. We scrape everything we can, of a vegetable 

 nature, that they can reduce to powder, and that will ultimately 

 decay, and supply them from time to time. 



Twenty loads of good compost may be made from the 

 house, with a family of half a dozen persons, — from the sink 

 drain, slops from the chambers, the necessary, &c., — if proper 

 preparations are made, and material thrown together as oc- 

 casion requires. I am satisfied that every householder, who 

 cultivates his land, from his small garden to his two hundred- 

 acre farm, can double the quantity of manure usually made, 

 in the course we have pursued in past years. I endeavor to 

 top-dress my low lands, every third or fourth year, with from 

 twenty to forty loads of good compost, which we endeavor to 

 get on as early in Octoljer as our other work will allow. I 

 have made the past year six hundred loads compost manure, 

 of good quality, not made for show but for use. The loads 

 carried on to my low ground this autumn not being full loads, 

 we have allowed one hundred loads to be certain of giving full 

 forty entire cubic feet to the load, and still have a quantity to 

 spare on hand. 



Josiah L. Bassett''s Statement. 



I have made and measured four hundred and forty-three 

 loads of manure the past year, (forty cubic feet to the load.) 

 It was made in the following manner : — One hundred and 

 seven loads were composed of soil, muck, and manure thrown 

 from the barn during the winter ; eight loads of peat ashes and 

 muck ; thirty loads were taken from under an old barn,'with 

 scrapings from other out-buildings ; nine loads were made of 

 soil and muck where it received the wash of two sinks ; two 

 hundred and eighty-nine loads were made in a yard connected 

 with a barn cellar, where I yarded my cattle and sheep through 



