108 



steam into both, for cooking the corn fodder and the hay. The 

 piggery is under the south-easterly barn. The swine are kept 

 in four or more pens. We noticed two fine litters of young 

 pigs. The swine are of different breeds — from the snug Suf- 

 folk to the coarse Chester, all handsome and well fed. For 

 a fuller description of this important department, we would 

 refer to the statement below. 



The indispensable tool shop is not wanting on this magnifi- 

 cent farm. The articles are " too numerous to mention " — a 

 horse hoe, all of iron, with three cutters and a wheel ; a hand 

 weeder, having a wheel forward with five flat cutting knives 

 flaring both ways, &c., &c.^tools with which some of the 

 Committee certainly were quite unacquainted, and yet evi- 

 dently no surplus or useless one. 



CAPABILITY OF SOILS FOR CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT. 



It is interesting to remark the capacity of all soils for un- 

 limited improvement. The man is still living and vigorous 

 (Mr. Mechi of Tiptree, in England) who purchased poor land 

 because he had no means for buying better. At the time of 

 Dr. J. R. Nichols' visit at that farm some six years ago, arriving 

 there " the first of June,^^ he found that Mr. Mechi " had al- 

 ready taken three heavy crops of Italian rye grass — a valuable 

 variety — and was expecting a fourth ready for the scythe in a 

 week .'" while in Switzerland, in the month of May, the farmers 

 " had already secured one, and in some instances two crops of 

 grass," And the old adage — " What man has done, man can 

 do," is never to be forgotten. And perhaps the same idea 

 may attach to soils, or to many of them. 



The Committee are not in possession of sufficient data to 

 allow them to speak with accuracy upon this point in relation 

 to the Pickman Farm. We have nothing, in fact, running 

 back much more than thirty years ; that being about the time 

 when a statement was published in the Society's Transactions 

 relating to the products of this farm. Previous to that time, 

 as we are informed, for at least one hundred years, it had been 



