FARMS. 5 



and can only speak in general terms ; yet, when lie says that he 

 gathered twenty-two dollars' worth of melons in one day; that 

 he should not realize more than lour hundred and fifty bushels 

 of onions to the acre, on account of the drought, which that 

 crop feels sensibly ; that there are a dozen long red potatoes 

 in a hill of noble size, — I can very well believe it all, because I 

 saw, when upon the around and at the house, melons enough for 

 several more such days of picking; onions enough to make 

 well nigh or quite four hundred and fifty bushels ; and pota- 

 toes answering the manifest fully, when the hills were opened 

 to me. 



The ftock kept upon the farm consists of one cow, one 

 heifer, four oxen, one bull, two horses, two shotes ; from which 

 it will at once be seen that the manure must come chielly from 

 some other source. The manure of Dr. Boyden's farm comes 

 chiefly from the sea-shore. This is the text — the farm itself 

 the comment. Now, while it is obvious that but a small part 

 of our farmers can have access to this source of fertilization, 

 it is nevertheless strange that so little account is made of 

 it when they can. The evidence to my mind is inevitable, 

 that for resisting drought there are few manures, if any, like 

 this. I do not pretend to have given the full account of the 

 crops upon this farm. As my visit was necessarily short, I 

 will close my account of it by expressing the hope that, should 

 the society send out a committee next year, they will make it 

 a point to visit Mr. Mason and report his doings at length. 



My second visit was to the farm of Burlcy Smith, of Man- 

 chester, an aged but vigorous gentleman, who showed me the 

 only house in Manchester that was painted when he settled 

 there, and that tfas painted with fish oil and Spanish brown 1 

 1 ought to say that, with all the beauty of Mr. Smith's farm, he 

 would not probably claim for it the title of a fancy farm any 

 more than would Dr. Hoyden for his ; but, for profit, few will 

 compare with either. 



Like the West Beach farm last described, this is manured 

 mostly from the sea. Mr. Smith thinks he gets about five hun- 

 dred tons of eel grass and rockweed from his half mile of 

 beach annually. Formerly his inner shore abounded with 

 muscle-bed mud ; but he docs not choose to draw too freely upon 



