(1860. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMEtl. 



137 



USES AMD VALUE OF MUCK — I. 



DISPOSITION is shown by most 

 persons to neglect the common 

 blessings which strew their 

 every-day paths, and to look at 

 a distance, into their neigh- 

 bor's field or manufactory, gar- 

 den or study, — or into another 

 town, or often a remote State, 

 for them, where they fancy 

 they may be obtained on easier 

 terms than in their own fields, 

 neighborhood or town. It was 



undoubtedly this restless desire that prompted 



Pope's line, that 



Man never is, but always to be bleat. 



The farmer has not escaped the infection, but 

 too often sees in other lands and avocations those 

 advantages which he imagines cannot be realized 

 upon his own acres and around his own hearth- 

 stone. The rainbow of promise, to him, con- 

 tinually looms up in the distance, while the dark 

 clouds of discouragement hang gloomily over his 

 present paths. Happily, the light of science has 

 in a considerable degree dissipated these clouds, 

 and opened the way for new practices in farming, 

 and better views of man's power over the materi- 

 als upon which he must work. This light now il- 

 lumines, in a greater or less degree, the whole 

 civilized world, and even darts its rays into the 

 regions of heathenism, and where men have not 

 emerged from a state of nature. And Avhile it has 

 shaken despotisms, and opened pathways between 

 nations, it has led the tiller of the soil to investi- 

 gations whose results are more valuable to the 

 world than all the gold of the "far Cathay," or of 

 the later mines of the Pacific coast. He has found 

 the idea v/hich prevailed so long, and which was 

 nearly universal, that j^t'ofit in farming could on- 

 ly be realized in the possession of large tracts of 

 land, was an erroneous one ; that land, capital and 

 skill should bear relative proportions to each oth- 

 er, and that where these proportions did not ex- 

 ist failure was the result, sometimes ending in 

 mortgaged estates and bankruptcy. The com- 

 mon expression now, therefore, is, that he must 

 seek a higher cultivation, 



ON LESS LAND, BUT WITH MORE SKILL AND FER- 

 TILIZING AGENTS. 



It was this idea that led to the inventions to 

 which we have alluded, and which resulted in the 

 discovery of a material on a large proportion of 

 our farms eminently calculated to restore ex- 

 hausted lands to fertility, and to produce once 

 more something like the amount of crops they 

 yielded when in a virgin state. This discovery, 

 through all the Ncav England States, especially, 

 has considerably changed the aspect of the soil 



and the crops, and connected with the idea of cul- 

 tivating less land, but in a higher manner, has in- 

 creased the property of the farmer to a degree 

 which he had never before attained. 



The value of farms in New England some thir- 

 ty or forty yeai-s ago, was greatly depreciated by 

 the presence of hog or sivampy land, as it was 

 considered nearly worthless for everything except- 

 ing the meagre timber or fuel Avhich might be cut 

 and hauled from it in the Avinter, or the scanty 

 and coarse herbage it would aff"ord to cattle dur- 

 ing the time of short pasturage in our summer 

 droughts. 



The value of such lands has entirely changed, 

 as where, at the former period, they would scarcely 

 command five dollars an acre, they now bring 

 from thirty to one hundred, and in the neighbor- 

 hood of villages standing on plain or sandy lands, 

 confer the greatest benefits in gardening, and 

 are worth five hundred dollars an acre, provided 

 the muck is of good quality, and the deposit is 

 deep and of convenient access. Indeed, it is often 

 said by those purchasing farms, that they would 

 not enter upon one, unless it were well supplied 

 with meadow muck, for it is this material and the 

 barn-cellar, that, like the philosopher's stone, 

 turn all they touch into gold. Though somewhat 

 poetical, this language is not altogether extrava- . 

 gant; for on every farm in our knowledge where 

 there is a good barn cellar, and the meadow much, 

 abounds, thrift and prosperity are evident to e\eiy. 

 passer-by. Our range of observation has been 

 somewhat extensive, and the use of muck has 

 been the subject of our critical observation for 

 many years. 



These muck swamps were long avoided as a 

 sort of tabooed territory, with scarcely sufl5.<;ient 

 tenacity to perform their part in "holding the 

 world together :" in the winter, rabbits tcwersed 

 them with their paths, and found feed in the bark 

 of the young and tender shrubs, and in the sum- 

 mer, frogs croaked and slimy things disported 

 themselves in security in their ancestral hramts. 

 There snakes deposited their eggs in the rotten 

 logs of an earlier growth, and from thence led 

 their supple broods to the heated slopes and rocks 

 to vivify and grow in the sun . Owls and bat* 

 came from their dark recesses-in the twilight to 

 feed on the denizens of the ligljter and purer air, 

 while the boy with his cows cast stealthy glances 

 at the dark jungles, to see if ghosts and goblins 

 were not issuing forth too. 



WHERE MUCK IS MOSTLY FOUND. 



It is in these long abandoned swamps that this 

 treasure, this vast acquisition to our national 

 wealth, is mainly found. In some cases, they are 

 bordered by precipitous or abru])t hills, and the 

 deposit in the basin there is usually deep, finely 



