790 [Assembly 



dered of more value to the grass, than 29 loads of the best rotted 

 stable manure. 



Such being the case, how inconceivably valuable is the \vater which 

 daily finds its way into the river, and thence into the ocean, from the 

 great city of New- York, how effectual would be the improvement of 

 our impoverished lands, if these valuable substances could find their 

 way to them instead of the ocean. By what our city fathers call their 

 improved plan of drainage, all the rich excrementitious matters now 

 find their way to the ocean likewise. These substances, if they could 

 be saved, would be worth countless millions to the agricultural in- 

 terest of the State. I will venture to say, that more than one thou- 

 sand tons of most valuable fertilizing matter, finds its way daily to 

 the rivers from the city of New-York; sufficient to enrich 30,000 

 acres of the poorest land annually; in such a manner as to render it 

 capable of producing 130 bushels of shelled corn to the acre; in- 

 stead of its present yield 25 bus!. els. It would pay the Long Island 

 and Jersey agriculturists, to construct at the mouth of the leading 

 sewers, water tight chambers, to collect the enriched waters of the 

 city, with which to irrigate their worn out and famished lands. These 

 •waters contain in solution, every known requisite for the growth of 

 plants, they contain calcium, lime, carbonate of lime, sulphate of 

 lime, nitrates, sulphates, phosphates, alumina, silica, magnesia, oxides, 

 organic and inorganic substances. In fact, every matter requisite to 

 agriculture, is contained in them, and they are beyond the shadow of 

 a doubt of inestimable value for the purpose of irrigation. 



If Earl Moray obtained, as I before stated, ^£55, or $244 per acre, 

 in a single year, for his grass, grown on poor sandy soil, in the neigh- 

 borhood of Edinburgh, merely by the use of street water, what is 

 there to prevent the Long Island farmer from obtaining like results. 

 Let me entreat you gentlemen to collect by subscription a few thou- 

 sand dollars and try the experiment! You will then leave your heira 

 a valuable inheritance. Pursue your present mode of agriculture, 

 and you will impoverish yourselves, and drive your children to the 

 western wilds. 



Mr. Meigs. Irrigation was once the source of the wealth and gran- 

 deur of Mesopotamia, of Babylon, and is yet of Egypt. In the for- 

 mer, there are now a few small towns on the Euphrates and Tigris, 

 which by using the waters of those rivers as of old, present in vege- 

 table glorj the grandeur of Irun. A relative who has seen it, says 

 that a hundred thousand Yankees would soon make the dry baked de- 

 serts of that region, blossom like the rose. 



