RECLAIMED MEADOWS. 101 



known to liis neighbors, that Mr. Boyden purchases no liay 

 except a little salt hay for his sheep. The manner of ascer- 

 taining the amount of the crop, it must be confessed, is not 

 entirely satisfactory. Three or four loads are weighed, and 

 the rest estimated. I visited Sandwich just after the first 

 mowing, this season, and was informed by Mr. Boyden that 

 the crop of hay amounted to twenty-five tons, a statement 

 which was confirmed, with very little variation, by all who 

 were concerned in getting in the hay. Before the second 

 crop was cut, twelve tons were expected, but upon my third 

 visit, I learned that it was only seven, a report that pleased 

 me very much, for I was really afraid to have it any more. 

 This is not the produce of one remarkable season ; I have 

 every reason to believe that about thirty-two tons of hay, 

 for a series of years, have been cut from this meadow of four 

 acres. 



Charles Burton. 



RECLAIMED M E A D O AY S . 



ESSEX. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



Leverett Bradley, of Methuen, having entered the only claim 

 for premium, three of your committee — Messrs. Stevens, Swan 

 and Keely — viewed his meadow on the 11th of July. We found 

 it to be a continuation of the same tract of meadow for the 

 reclaiming of which Mr. Bradley received the first premium of 

 this society in 1848. That part was on the river side of the 

 highway ; this is on the opposite side, and lies quite near to the 

 now venerable mansion in which he resides. 



By about one hundred and fifty rods of ditching, done in the 

 spring of 1858, the water was brought down from the meadow 

 to the main ditch of the lower meadow, and passed off" to the 

 river. It was in this lower ditch that Mr. Bradley, by the work 

 of a few minutes only, dammed the water so elfectually as to 

 irrigate the whole meadow, during the drought of last spring, 

 to the manifest benefit of the cro}). 



