MEADOW AND SWAMP LAND. 109 



Your Committee feel well satisfied with the results already 

 attained ; they most cheerfully award to him the highest pre- 

 mium offered by the society, (five dollars.) Our farms in 

 Franklin County are capable of productive improvement. 

 Would it not, then, be advisable for the agricultural society to 

 give more encouragement to farm improvement by offering a 

 higher premium for converting swamp lands into English 

 meadow ? The entries made for such improvements for the last 

 two or three years have been very few. We are sorry to find 

 no more competition for tins premium. The Committee trust 

 that Mr. AlHs' example will call the attention of farmers to their 

 wortldess lands, and that this society will have numerous exper- 

 iments before it with an approacli to the real value of the im- 

 provement. We liave the satisfaction, however, to report that 

 this subject is receiving increasing attention ; that a very con- 

 siderable number of our substantial farmers are taking their 

 first step in this direction ; and we confidently predict that the 

 next five years will witness results from this method of improv- 

 ing the worthless and worn-out lands in the county, on the hill- 

 tops as well as the valleys, which at the present time we should 

 hardly anticipate. Some of the most valuable farms in the 

 county of Franklin are situated on the summits and declivities 

 of the hills in Shelburne, Conway, Colrain and Leyden. Some 

 of those farms are wet and consequently backward, and cannot 

 be worked in early spring, subjecting the owner to the necessity 

 of cultivating mainly the various grasses. Now, as man cannot 

 live on grass alone, we would suggest to the proprietors of such 

 farms to try the experiment of under-draining one acre, at least, 

 that they may have the satisfaction of regaling themselves, as 

 early as the Fourth of July, with pease, potatoes and other veg- 

 etables, raised on their own land. It will be gratifying to be 

 able to cultivate one acre of drained land almost as soon as the 

 frost is out, rather than to wait, as formerly, till a dry spell 

 would, by degrees, evaporate the surface-water, leaving a hard 

 crust on a cold under-soil, when previously it was difficult get- 

 ting about on the field. A wet soil, that has no way of freeing 

 itself of an excess of water but by evaporation, will be cold, 

 and the crop will be both later and inferior to what it would be 

 provided the soil was freed from this excess of moisture by 

 drainage. Crops are also more liable to injury from frosts, 



