128 PLYMOUTH SOCIETY. 



for top-dressings. It is judged expedient to give equal reward, 

 and recommended that $10 be paid to each of them. 



Six entries were made for compost manure. The claimants 

 have not generally been as particular as they should have been 

 in the description of materials used in composting, and, with a 

 single exception, all have omitted any description of the soil on 

 which it was applied. These omissions are very blameworthy. 

 The labor of composting may be almost entirely lost in the use 

 of materials not adapted to the soil where it is applied. If a 

 clayey soil is to be dressed, and we make the compost heaps 

 chiefly with clay, all we can possibly gain by the labor will be 

 the absorption of some of the gases contained in the animal 

 manure of the heap. But, if compost for a clayey soil is made 

 chiefly of light loam and sand, then we may anticipate much 

 benefit from the principal ingredient, in ameliorating the char- 

 acter of the soil, and reducing it, as often as ploughed, to a more 

 permeable state. When a light soil is dressed, the principal in- 

 gredients in the compost should be of a rigid character, that the 

 soil may be gradually reduced to a state of greater tenacity. 

 The success of farmers, situated at a distance from cities, will 

 always depend very much on a judicious mixture of soils. This, 

 at a first view, seems a very herculean labor, and some theorists 

 use the language of discouragement, on the supposition that the 

 expense will always exceed the benefits. Where a great deal is 

 attempted in a given time, no doubt this would prove true. If 

 we should undertake, in a single year, to remove all the sand in 

 Plymouth county on to the clay flats in Norfolk, or the clay 

 found here on to the sands in Barnstable, it would prove a very 

 expensive and unprofitable enterprise, equal to the project of 

 irrigating a whole country from the rivers by steam power. Nu- 

 merous important objects can be accomplished in gradual ad- 

 vances, which never could be reached in the execution of mag- 

 nificent schemes. One great battle would probably have decided 

 the Revolutionary War in favor of Great Britain : by cautious 

 movements, and careful improvement of minor advantages, the 

 fiinal decision, to our great joy, was widely different. The farm- 

 er, who would ruin himself in a project of reducing all his soils 

 to the state desired in a given time, may do something of the 



