4 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE.' 



one that cannot, from the nature of the case, be avoided ; viz., 

 the want of perfect accuracy in stating the amount produced 

 or the amount of manure applied. The visits of the commit- 

 tee are made while the crops are growing, so that the amount 

 of grain or «iTass upon an acre cannot be determined. This, 

 however, does not preclude the possibility of obtaining the 

 most important information. And, without extending these 

 general remarks, I will proceed to say, that on the 10th of 

 September I visited the farm of Dr. Boy den, at West Beach, 

 in Beverly. The tenant is Lyman Mason, and he has been upon 

 it eight years. It was a farm of fifty acres till last year, when 

 eighteen acres were sold. Its previous condition I did not 

 loam. Its present state, however, I wish I were able to de- 

 scribe. Mr. Mason hires his son and a boy constantly, but no 

 other help except by day's work in haying time and harvest- 

 ing. He usuall}- obtains about fifteen loads of night soil as a 

 stimulant to give his crops a start, and has sometimes paid as 

 high as forty dollars a year for stable manure ; but his chief 

 reliance is upon the drift stuff from the beach. The amount 

 of the most admirable manure, chielly eel grass, obtained and 

 applied, he was not able to state ; but he dresses his lands with 

 thirty ox-loads to the acre — I mean a team of one pair of oxen. 

 It costs him four cents a load at the beach. A small part of it 

 is kept over winter in the yard, to be used in the hill for corn 

 ami potatoes. The clfect of the manure (the seaweed) is 

 admirable in resisting the drought. While almost every other 

 farm was exhibiting the yellow hue, this one was green and 

 gladsome. I was satisfied that Mr. Mason's three acres of. 

 corn had eighty bushels to the acre — 1 think more rather than 

 less. The ground was in potatoes and squashes last year, and 

 had been under the plough four years. 



Mr. Mason has about one acre of cabbages, with about four 

 thousand handsome heads, worth from live to ten cents each in 

 the market; suppose seven cents on an average, ami we have 

 two hundred and eighty dollars for that acre. He has also 

 one and a half acre8 of onions, and has cut, he says, thirty tons 

 of English hay this year, and raised one hundred and fifty 

 bushels of rye. The gardes propor is large, but not measured. 

 1 have alluded to the necessary want of accuracy in the case, 



