20 MR. gray's address. 



cultivated. At least, we iiavc in these swamps and low- 

 Jands, invaluable sources of I'ertility, sources which are 

 inexhaustible because supplied with food lor the plants of 

 a thousand generations. 



I asked a farmer in tliis county son)etime since, why 

 do you not inij)rove your waste lands, such as peat 

 swamps and meadows ? Why, says he, we cannot ob- 

 tain manure enough for our uplands ; live dollars a cord 

 is too high a price to pay and get a living by it. 'I'he 

 idea of a want of manure here, was to me, I must con- 

 fess, no less astonishing than ridiculous, when 1 called to 

 mind that these same " unimprovable lands," as they are 

 styled upon the records of the town, contained manure 

 enough in some sections to cover all your tilled lands a 

 foot deep; — manure enough to render every acre of soil 

 as fertile as the prairies of the west ; — manure enough to 

 cause two tons of hay to grow where now grows but 

 one, and an equal increase in all the other productions 

 of the farm. I'here are few portions of the state where 

 the sources of fertility are more abundant than they are 

 in this county. Let it be granted, if you please, that 

 these lands are unimprovable as soils, (which is by no 

 means true, many of them being tl.e most valuable for this 

 purpose,) still, they are vast repositories of vegetable 

 ibod, which, by the application of science and skill, may 

 easily be converted into manure, and placed upon the 

 neigliboring sand hills, thus changingthe whole county into 

 a fertile garden. Were strict justice done, the owner of 

 peat meadow* and swamp muck, instead of being as- 

 sessed for thirty or forty acres of " unimprovable land," 

 considered valueless on the town records, should be taxed 

 ibr forty acres of manure, from one to fifteen feet in 

 depth, and worth five dollars per cord as soon as convert- 

 ed into the food of plants. f By making agriculture a 



* Tlie vuluo of pc;it boffs may 1)0 stated in ^i'w words, says Mr. Mathews, in 

 Jiis fiuirlh riinuial report oC tli,. Goolo(ry of the State of i\e\v York. 1 . " Peat is 

 e(|ual to oak wood, bulk for bulk. 2. 'Peat lands are more productive by far 

 llian uplands. '.\. Peat manure is more valuable than stable manure." 



t See letters of Elias Pliinney, Esq. of Le.xinjrton, and Dr. N. C. Rush. In 

 Dr. C. T. Jackson's Third Annual Report of the Geology of Maine, p. 12i1, and 



