96 



187S Cr. 



Two tons of hay (1st crop), $32.00 



1| tons (one and one-half tons rovven), 28.00 



160.00 

 Cost of gathering hay crop, 11.25 



48.75 

 Add profit on crop of 1877, 21.30 



•And profit of land reclaimed is $70.05 



Last Fall I seeded down a second acre of swamp land ad- 

 joining the above, which was really in worse condition origi- 

 nally than the first lot, which I will place beside any lot of 

 reclaimed land in Essex county. Beneath the surface of this 

 swamp land, I dug out many stumps of trees and partially 

 decayed trunks of swamp maples and swamp oaks. 



The land in both instances was so wet that it could only be 

 ploughed at the very dryest season, and not until the water, 

 which permeated the whole surface, had been drained off 

 through the drains. A.s a result, I have now one of the best 

 lots of grass land in this section, the land resembling the 

 bottom lands of the West in depth of soil am^ fertility. 



STATEMENT OF J. J. H. GREGORY. 



The piece of Improved Wet Meadow I enter for premium is 

 located on my farm in Danvers, just over the border of Mid- 

 dleton. It comprises between three and four acres, situated in 

 about the middle of a tillage field of eighteen acres. When 

 taken in hand, this tract of four acres or thereabouts was a 

 meadow of thin, coarse, natural grass, with cranberry vinns 

 scattered here and there. The hay did not pay for the cutting 

 and hence it was not always mowed, while the cranberry vines 

 yielded next to nothing. A shallow broad ditch ran through 

 the middle of it, and on the bank of earth thrown out in the 

 digging of it grew a row of willow trees, from one to three 

 feet in diameter, evidently planted there with the idea that the 



