16 MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 



and small stones, the water seems to rise almost perpendicu- 

 larly, and must be taken from each spring as best it can. But, 

 as meadows and surrounding lands vary so much, I deem it 

 impossible to lay down any rule that Avill be applicable to all 

 cases, except saying, keep off the water. 



From William Buckminster^ Framingham.- — The first lot of 

 bog meadow that I showed you, on my farm in Framingham, 

 has a peaty surface, from 1 to 2 feet in thickness, and a sub- 

 stratum of sand. For one hundred and fifty years, this land 

 produced annual crops of meadow grass, and, for fifty years 

 past, this has been of poor quality, a specimen of which you 

 saw uncut. Some part of the meadow has produced from 10 

 to 15 hundred of hay per acre. It was scarcely worth the labor 

 of cutting and making. 



My mode of converting this meadow to bear English grass 

 was to drain it by ditches four rods apart, and dig to the depth 

 and width of three feet. I dug them, and let the contents lie on 

 the banks for one whole year previous to spreading ; and, on 

 spreading the mud, I added to it loam enough to cover com- 

 pletely all the grass which grew on the ground, carted from the 

 adjoining highland. I left but little loam on the banks where 

 the mud had lain, for the natural grasses were completely dead, 

 and needed no covering. By leaving the grass between the 

 ditches uncut, I find it much easier to bury the whole and thus 

 kill it, than when I cut the grass and make hay of it. For, in 

 some cases, one ox-load of thirty bushels will cover one rod square. 

 When the grass is cut, it does not die without a deeper covering. 



The cost of covering one acre where the bank is high, and 

 where the meadow bears up the team, is not very great. The 

 ditch mud is a great help ; and the ditching costs but twenty- 

 five cents a rod, job-work. One good man with a yoke of oxen 

 will cover an acre well, under favorable circumstances, in eight 

 or ten days. One of the acres which you saw was covered at 

 an expense not exceeding twenty dollars, in addition to the 

 ditching. 



I sow my grass seed in the last week of August, or the first 

 of September, spreading on the surface fifteen to twenty ox- 

 loads of compost manure (thirty bushels in a load) per acre ; 



