INVESTIGATIONS AT THE COLLEGE 49 



sugar industry in the United States, and although he 

 never saw his prophecy realized in Massachusetts be- 

 cause of the more profitable use of the land for other 

 crops, his teachings concerning the cultivation and 

 fertilization of the beet hold true at the present time, 

 and he lived to see a large beet-sugar industry devel- 

 oped in California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Michi- 

 gan. The present area in the United States devoted to 

 sugar beets is some 624,000 acres which produced in 

 1915, in round numbers, 862,800 tons of sugar. 1 



H. RECLAMATION OF SALT MARSHES 



First Paper. On the best mode of subduing and util- 

 izing for tillage the salt marshes in this state, after they 

 are drained. (Agriculture of Massachusetts, 1874.) In 

 this paper he 'gives the origin, the general character, 

 and the agricultural history of a few successfully re- 

 claimed sea-marshes of Europe, for the purpose of 

 rendering more prominent some striking features of 

 similarity which exist between them and the recently 

 diked marshes above the mouth of Green Harbor 

 River in the township of Marshfield, Plymouth County, 

 Massachusetts.' He described in some detail 'grad- 

 ual changes which the original vegetation was under- 

 going since the water of the ocean has been excluded, 

 in consequence of the construction of an efficient dike, 

 pointing out on the same occasion some of the causes 

 which seemed to control the still varying or broken-up 

 aspect of the present natural growth in the different 

 sections of the salt marshes.' 



1 Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1915, p. 497. 



