184 APPENDIX. [March, 



while it was covered with ice and frozen hard enough to be carted 

 over without cutting it into ruts. These lands produced from one to 

 two tons of good merchantable hay to the acre, nearly double the crop 

 produced by the same lands last year. And one fact induces me to 

 think, that being spread on the ice, as above mentioned, a portion of 

 these ashes was washed away by the Spring freshet. The fact from 

 which I infer this, is, that a run below, over which the water coming 

 from the meadow on which the largest part of these ashes were spread 

 flows, produced more than double the quantity of hay, and that of a 

 very superior quality to what had been ever known to grow on the 

 same land before. 



Seventy bushels of these ashes, together with a quantity not exceed- 

 ing thirty bushels of mixed coal and wood ashes, made by my kitchen 

 and parlor fires, were mixed with my barn manure, derived from one 

 horse kept in stable the whole year, one other horse kept in stable dur- 

 ing the winter months, one cow kept through the winter, and one pair 

 of oxen employed almost daily on the road and in the woods, but fed in 

 the barn one hundred days. This manure was never measured, but 

 knowing how it was made, by the droppings and litter or bedding of 

 these cattle, farmers can estimate the quantity with a good degree of 

 correctness. These ashes and this manure were mixed with a suffi- 

 cient quantity of the mud, above mentioned, by forking it over three 

 times, to manure three acres of corn and potatoes, in hills four feet 

 by about three feet apart, giving a good shovel full to the hill. More 

 than two thirds of this was grass land, which produced last year about 

 half a ton of hay to the acre, broken up by the plough in April. The 

 remainder was cropped last year without being well manured, with 

 corn and potatoes. Gentlemen, you have seen the crop growing and 

 matured, and I leave it to you to say whether or not the crop on this 

 land would have been better had it been dressed with an equal quan- 

 tity of pure, well rotted barn manure. For my own part I believe it 

 would not, but that this experiment proves, that peat mud, thus man- 

 aged, is equal if not superior to the same quantity of any other sub- 

 stance in common use as a manure among us ; which, if it be a fact, 

 is a fact of immense value to the farmers of New England. By the 

 knowledge and use of it, our comparatively barren soils may be made 

 to equal or excel in productiveness the virgin prairies of the West. 

 There were many hills in which the corn first planted was destroyed 

 by worms. A part of these were supplied with the small Canada corn^ 

 a part with beans. The whole was several times cut down by frost. 



