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On Oat Pasture and Improvement of Soils, By William 

 To ling. Of Delaivare. 



Read March 13th, 1810. 



Rockland Farm, March 9th, 1810. 



Sir, 



In compliance with your request, made a consider- 

 able time ago, I have inclosed a narrative of the oat 

 pasture ; and several circumstances under which it has 

 been introduced, with immediate advantage, to the live 

 stock and worn fields. 



I have endeavoured to copy it from the fields them- 

 selves ; I have however, designedly as it were gone 

 back, to give another view, of some circumstances 

 which are deemed important, and not with a view to 

 overcome your patience, but to remove doubts, and 

 introduce the experiments before you, in a different 

 point of view. The inferences respecting the advan- 

 tages, or use of the oat pasture, have been, and still may 

 be deemed a whimsical expedient to spend money ; it 

 may be ridiculed by others. But as it has outlived, and 

 overgrown every thing of that nature here, there is some 

 hope, that it may become indigenous elsewhere : it has 

 been weighed for years under hopes and fears. Not 

 that I dread criticisms, made under circumstances 

 which offer a hearing, in private, and before the public 

 tribunal, on equal ground, foot by foot, with the critic. 

 It would give satii^faction to convince, or to be con- 

 vinced. Improvement is the goal towards which I bend 



