218 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



life. This twofold action of air is wonderful. No sooner does 

 an animal or vegetable die than the oxygen of the air seizes 

 upon it to resolve it into its elements, and reconstruct these 

 elements into new forms of life and beauty. But this process 

 cannot go on when air is excluded by water. Witness our 

 muck swamps, which are vast accumulations of vegetable mat- 

 ter, kept from decay because covered with water. When 

 drained, the muck begins to decompose, the swamp settles, and 

 the nutritious grasses make their appearance upon its surface. 

 Not only does the air penetrate the drained land, but the rains, 

 bringing with them the nutritious gases of the atmosphere, 

 descend and percolate through the soil, leaving these gases for 

 the nourishment of plants. This is the normal mode in which 

 water should act upon our meadows. They like to drink water 

 as man drinks it, but are just as much opposed to being drowned 

 as man is. 



Drainage, however fundamental it may be for the improve- 

 ment of our grass crop, is not alone sufficient to accomplish all 

 that is needed. Most of our meadows must be top-dressed if we 

 desire them to accomplish all that their capacity allows. Drain- 

 ing is the forerunner of manuring, and prepares the way for the 

 efficient action of the manure. Subtracting the water does in- 

 deed allow the vegetable and mineral matter already in the soil 

 to be digested by the plant ; but few New England lands have 

 all the food that plants need, and the deficiency we must sup- 

 plement from the compost heap. We know no crop that feels 

 the quickening influence of manure sooner than grass, nor any 

 that yields a more grateful return. Manure applied to a hoed 

 crop increases weeds as well as the crop ; but applied to grass 

 land we have ever found the grasses to get the ascendancy, and 

 the grass improves in quantity and quality year after year. It 

 is just as unreasonable to suppose that meadows can endure 

 perpetual cropping without some return as that ploughed land 

 can. The meadows may endure the exhausting process longer, 

 as in ploughing the vegetable matter in the soil is more exposed 

 to the action of the air, and consequently wastes more rapidly ; 

 but we cannot take off two tons of hay from a meadow yearly 

 without diminishing the potash, soda and other salts requisite 

 in the growth of grass. Our alluvial meadows formed by the 

 deposit of the rivers, and annually refreshed by their overflow, 



