128 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



meadow has been composted with manure and applied to other 

 lands, and is, I am confident, worth more than the expense of 

 digging and carting. The expense of reclaiming this meadow, 

 is, therefore, confined to the cutting and burning, or otherwise 

 removing the bogs, and the application of earth. This last, 

 while I am not certain that it is absolutely essential, is I think 

 expedient, because of the super-abundance of vegetable matter 

 in the composition of the meadow. Adjoining the above acre 

 I sowed grass seed upon one-half acre of land, on the eleventh 

 of September, without the application of earth or manure, and 

 very little grass is to be seen. I think manure without earth 

 would not have secured its growth. Neither am I certain that 

 the application of earth without manure would have done so. 

 But had the two been applied as in the other case, I have no 

 doubt the result would have been equally favorable. Having 

 more earth I wish removed, I intend during the present month, 

 (November) to apply it to this and adjoining land and restock. 

 As the distance or " average haul " is an important item in 

 removing earth, I will state that in all the above cases it does 

 not vary much from thirty rods. My crops have been uniform- 

 ly good, yet none remarkably so. Eleven acres have been 

 mown, producing by estimation about twenty tons of hay. 

 One and one-half acres was clover, mown twice, then sowed to 

 rye August 24th, and is now a fine pasture for calves, which 

 have grazed upon it since the fifteenth of October. A small 

 field of spring wheat, one and one-fourth acres, is perhaps 

 among the best. This was sowed the tenth of April, two and 

 one-half bushels per acre. The wheat has not all been threshed, 

 but judging from what has been threshed, which I think a fair 

 average, the yield is thirty-two bushels per acre. Of oats I had 

 five acres, some of which were very heavy, others only ordinary, 

 the average yield I think fifty bushels. Corn seven and three- 

 fourths acres including two acres much injured by the wire 

 worm, produced six hundred and ninety bushels of ears. This 

 is of the kind called Demond corn, and two bushels of ears 

 produce thirty-eight quarts of corn. Potatoes have been grown 

 in broken patches, and the ground not all measured. The 

 yield has been about four hundred and fifty bushels. Of mangold 

 wurzels, I have forty-four rods, from whicli we have just 

 harvested six tons two hundred and ten pounds of well trimmed 



