BEPORTS. 35 



may say thousands of acres in the county of Hampshire that may be 

 reclaimed and would be the most productive lands we have. 



J. SHIPMAN. 

 Hadley, Oct. 20, 1851. 



STATE MEXT OF LEONARD BARRETT. 



To the Committee on Reclaimed Meadow Land : 



Gentlemen : — According to my earliest recollections, the land 

 was covered with bogs and a species of small low water brush. As long 

 ago as I can recollect, my father used to mow the most, of it and 

 got nothing but the very poorest kind of bog-hay, and that we had to 

 carry out to hard land by hand on poles, in most cases the ground 

 being too soft to drive cattle across it. 



But in process of time the grass mostly died out for want of drain- 

 ing and the bushes took its place. At the decease of my father some 

 thirteen years since, it came into my possession, and I resolved, after 

 hearing and seeing some experiments on similar ground, to try my for- 

 tune at improving it. Accordingly I commenced cutting the bushes 

 and hired a drain dug the whole length of it about three feet wide 

 and one foot in depth, and the spring following, burnt it over to kill 

 the small bushes. But I foiind in one season that my drain was not 

 sufficient, and I sunk it a foot lower, which I found to answer very 

 AvelL although I have had to clean it out and widen it twice since. 

 After lying in this condition two years, I commenced bogging. I 

 first took a small piece and cut the whole surface over just low 

 enough to smooth it and take all the bushes and bogs and piled them 

 in heaps and carted off what I could get at, and burnt the remainder 

 and sowed the ashes over the ground and then after raking it smooth, 

 I sowed my grass seed consisting of red clover, white clover, herds 

 grass and fowl-meadow, and raked it in. 



I also tried bogging it deeper, turning the surface OA^er and culti- 

 vating the bogs, and although this leaves a richer top, yet it takes a 

 long time to subdue the Aveeds and Avild grass in this Avay ; and I find 

 the better Avay after having ditched around a piece, to cut and turn 

 over the surface late in the fall and let it lie until the next August 

 or September, then, if possible, burn it as it lies, and soav your grass 

 seed and rake it smooth ; then in the spring folloAving, give it a slight 

 dressing of manure accompanied Avith a good portion of lime (slack) 

 and plaster of Paris. 



In this Avay I have brought this nearly useless land to bear tAvo 



