CROPS AND PROFITS. 115 



a mud that is all aflow, and which the suns bake into 

 a surface, that with the sharpest of mattocks would 

 start a flood of perspiration, before he had combed a 

 square yard of it into a state of garden pulverization. 



Lying above this, however, was a vegetable 

 mould, with a shiny silicious intermixture (what pre- 

 cise people would call a sandy loam), well knitted 

 together by a compact mass of the roots of myrtles, 

 of huckleberry bushes, and of ferns. Geologically, 

 the hill was a ' drift ; ' agriculturally, considering the 

 steep slopes and the matted roots, it was uninviting ; 

 pictorially, it was rounded into the most graceful of 

 cumulated swells, and all glowing with its wild ver- 

 dure ; practically, it was a coarse bit of neglected 

 cow-pasture, with the fences down, and the bushes 

 rampant. 



What could be done with this ? It is a query 

 that a great many landholders throughout New Eng- 

 land will have occasion some day to submit to them- 

 selves, if they have not done so already. Overfeed- 

 ing with starveling cows, and a lazy dash at the brush 

 in the idle days of August, will not transform such 

 hills into fields of agricultural wealth. Under such 

 regimen they grow thinner and thinner. The annual 

 excoriation of the brush above ground, seems only to 

 provoke a finer and firmer distribution of the roots 

 below; and the depasturing by cows particularly 



