520 [Assembly 



more acres, and by the help of a small steam engine, the water 

 is kept pumped out during wet seasons, so as to render the whole 

 highly fertile, and at this time every foot of its area is employed 

 as a nursery, in the highest state of fertility. In some localitieSj 

 as between Newark and Elizabethtown, the projection of necks of 

 upland to the river, invites the erection of a dyke to keep out the 

 tides, and in this case a short road between the two places could 

 be constructed, in a straight line on the dyke, saving the distance 

 of the long road surrounding the meadow, besides restoring 18,000 

 acres of now nearly worthless land. These meadows are now 

 covered with flag, three-square cats tail, salt grass, fine salt, black 

 grass, etc., worth scarcely $1 per ton beyond the cost of cutting, 

 and which can only be carted off in the winter when the mea- 

 dows are frozen. If dyked, the soil instead of being worth $10 

 or less per acre, would be worth $200, for the cultivation of more 

 valuable crops. Newark and Elizabethtown, by such improve- 

 ment, would be saved from that scourge, the fever and ague, 

 while the cattle raised by the neighboring farmers would get a 

 better class of food during the winter. The prejudice, however, 

 of some of the old style delvers of the soil, has thus far prevented 

 the improvement. Precedents are not wanted in the very neigh- 

 borhood of these meadows, which clearly illustrate the fact that 

 the experiment would prove successful — for a few years since, Mr. 

 Anthony Dey and associates, dyked a piece of meadow on the bank 

 of the Passaic, opposite Newark, of the same kind, and the second 

 year this dyked meadow produced good corn crops, and is now 

 selling in town lota as East Newark. 



Thousands of acres of inland meadow, now nearly useless, are 

 to be found in the vicinity of Newark, Morristown, Aquackanouk, 

 Belvidere, etc., and notwithstanding the fact that small portions 

 of each of these meadows have been restored by enterprising 

 individuals, still the great mass is left unimproved. 



A few years since we published an account of the restoration 

 of part of the great meadow of Sussex county, by Dr. J. Marshall 

 Paul, formerly of Philadelphia, now of Belvidere, N. J., and we 

 then gave an engraving of the tool used by Dr. Paul lor the 

 removal of hassocks from the surface, by which he levelled many 



