FARMS. . 109 



the crops are growing, so that the amount of grain or grass upon 

 an acre cannot be determined. This, however, does not preclude 

 the possibihty of obtaining the most important information. And 

 without extending these general remarks, I would proceed to say, 

 that on the 10th of September I visited the farm of Doct. Boyden, 

 at West Beach, in Beverly. The tenant is Lyman Mason, and he 

 has been upon it eight years. It was a farm of fifty acres till last 

 year, when eighteen acres were sold. Its previous condition I did 

 not learn. Its present state, however, I wish I were able to 

 describe. Mr. Mason hires his son and a boy constantly, but no 

 other help except by day's work, in haying time and harvesting. 

 He usually obtains about fifteen loads of night soil as a stimulant, 

 to give his crops a start, and has sometimes paid as high as forty 

 dollars a year for stable manure. But his chief reliance is upon the 

 drift stuff from the beach. The amount of the most admirable 

 manure, chiefly eel grass, obtained and applied, he was not able to 

 state ; but he dresses his lands with thirty ox-loads to the acre — I 

 mean a team of one pair of oxen. It costs him four cents a load at 

 the beach. A small part of it is kept over winter in the yard, to 

 be used in the hill for corn and potatoes. The effect of the ma- 

 nure, (the sea-weed) is admirable in resisting the drought. While 

 almost every other farm was exhibiting the yellow hue, this one was 

 green and gladsome. I was satisfied that Mr. Mason's three acres 

 of corn had eighty bushels to the acre — I think more rather than 

 less. The ground was in potatoes and squashes last year, and had 

 been under the plough four years. 



Mr. Mason has about one acre of cabbages, with about four 

 thousand handsome heads, worth from five to ten cents each in the 

 market ; suppose seven cents on an average, and we have two 

 hundred and eighty dollars for that acre. He has also one and a 

 half acres of onions, and has cut, he says, thirty tons of English 

 hay this year, and raised one hundred and fifty bushels of rye. The 

 garden proper is large, but not measured. I have alluded to the 

 necessary want of accuracy in the case, and can only speak in 

 general terms ; j^et when he says he gathered twenty-two dollars' 

 worth of melons in one day, that he should not realize more than 

 four 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, 



