84 



open a drain for the water. The land, being parson ag^e 

 had, like most of such lands, been suffered to remain in its 

 native &tate. 



Ten or twelve years ago, this parsonage land came inta 

 the possession of Richard Phillips, Jr., who took hold of it 

 in good earnest, and opened a drain through for about one 

 hundred rods, cleared off the bushes, and worked over the 

 soil. Six or eight acres were thus worked over, two of 

 which made an impenetrable swamp, inhabited only by rep- 

 tiles and rabbits, and from which he cleared off and burned 

 about two hundred tons of bushes and brambles, and, in the 

 fen'guage of the workmen, " bulFs-heads," being buncheS' 

 of serge grass^ the bigness of a flour barrel, and half as- 

 Mgh. 



This piece of work is thought, by all obserTers^ to be the 

 greatest improvement that has been made in the town, of 

 late years, the land being now as productive as any like 

 quantity in Topsfield. Some years since it was offered to 

 our Society for premium ; only one of the Committee, how- 

 ever, visited it, and, for some informality about the state- 

 ment, it was rejected. 



• After Mr. Phillips had so clearly opened thewayylbegany 

 *en years since, the work of reclaiming wet meadow and 

 swamp land, with which I was surrounded, being on a pen-^ 

 iusula, and joined to him below. I opened a main drain? 

 through my meadoAv, and bedded up, by eross-ditches,- 

 about two acres, v/bich I should not do again, the cross- 

 ditches and bedding being unnecessary, grubbing and grav- 

 elling being better. 



During these ten years, I have grubbed and gravelled 

 over some half dozen acres of wet meadow and swamp 

 land • making, together with that of Mr. Phillips, all in one 

 body, twelve acres, which, from being unproductive, have 

 jRot failed to produce, taken together, not less than one ton 



