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Its mode of application is still however matter of experiment ; 

 and experiments here are greatly desired. On our alluvial 

 lands its effects are said not to be apparent ; on our hills, in 

 somo cases most strikingly so. An intelligent farmer on the 

 Hoosac river informed me that they had found the use of it on 

 lands, where the growth was maple, beach, &-c. of no avail ; 

 but on their pine and oak lands separated from the other 

 only by the river, immediate and valuable. To clover it is 

 applied always with great advantage. Every well-attested fact 

 in regard to it deserves attention, and ought to be fully and 

 exactly communicated to the agricultural public. 



Another means of improving lands, the value of which ex- 

 periment has amply confirmed is the intermixture of soils. 

 What is properly called marl, an unctuous and calcareous clay, 

 which will effervesce on the application of acids, has not been 

 found among us. A valuable deposit of it has been recently 

 discovered in New Jersey, which the farmers are there apply- 

 ing with great advantage. In our primitive region it is per- 

 haps not to be looked for. But we have peat, bog mud, sand, 

 and clay in abundance in different parts of the country ; and 

 the application of clay to a sandy, and of sand to a clayey soil, 

 is of obvious utility ; and often of better and certainly more 

 permanent effects than the most abundant dressing of animal 

 manures. Some of our Deerfield farmers, I am told, have 

 found the application of clay to a certain extent as a top dres- 

 sing on their grass grounds of great advantage ; but I am not 

 sufficiently advised on the subject to speak more fully. An 

 intelligent farmer of Plymouth county ,f whose authority, I know 

 from personal acquaintance, is to be entirely relied on, has 

 practised with great success and to a considerable extent on 

 this principle of the intermixture of soils ; and has rendered his 

 farm, at first quite inferior one of the most productive in the 



unty. He has given the details of his experience to the 

 ublic in a dissertation, for which he was honored with the 



f The Rev. Morrill Allen, of Pembroke, Mass. 



