RECLAIMED SWAMPS. 71 



Ploughing and harrowing. 

 Seed corn and oats, 

 Hay seed, .... 

 Thirty-five loads of manure, 

 Planting, hoeing and harvesting, 



Profit on crop, 



Increased value of the land, 



Total gain, $68 10 



STATEMENT OF AVERY D. HUBBARD. 



My swamp contains about five acres, one acre of which, I oft'er for 

 the examination of the committee. Previous to my coming in pos- 

 session, it was drained around the edge, and was so dry as to permit 

 a team on it, in a dry time. It bore a small quantity of coarse sage 

 gi-ass, barely sufiicient to pay for getting. At that time, I oftered 

 the land for sixteen dollars an acre. Becoming satisfied, that it was 

 too wet to improve, I let a man cut a drain for the muck, thus divid- 

 ing my swamp and leaving little more than an acre in the lot I have 

 reclaimed. On about twenty rods of the least boggy part, I cleared 

 off the bogs and wood, and carted on sand and a little horse manure, 

 sowing on a quart or two of herds-grass seed, a kind of red-top com- 

 ing up around the bogs. It has produced two heavy crops of grass a 

 year, till this year, when the drought so aflected the rowen, that I 

 have fed it down. In the spring of 1853, I took twenty-seven rods 

 more, cleared off the bogs and wood, and planted with potatoes, put- 

 ting a little lime in the hill, and I had a fair growth, though a good 

 many potatoes rotted. In July, 1853, I took off the sage grass from 

 the remainder and set fire to it. In about a week, it had burned all 

 over, and had also burned about four inches of the muck. I thus 

 entirely cleared the land of bogs, and the stumps were so loose, that 

 a yoke of small cattle removed them from the piece, without difficulty. 

 With a hoe I levelled down, Avhere the roots came out ; and, on the 

 ninth of August, sowed about a pint of turnip seed and six quarts of 

 herds-grass seed. There was a fair crop of turnips, and the grass 

 looked fine in the fall. In May, it looked Avell, and a number of 

 good judges, who saw it, said it bid fair to be the heaviest crop of 

 herds-grass they ever saw. But the dry weather hurt it. Still, a 

 number thought it would yield two tons to the acre, but, being at 

 quite a distance from any scales, it was not weighed. 



The spring being very wet and backward, I did not plant the 

 piece I had potatoes on last year, till the 13th of June. I spread on 

 about eight horse-loads of compost, made of muck and sand, two 

 tushels of ashes, one bushel of oyster-shell lime, twenty-five pounds 



