442 Transactions of tee American Institute. 



its whole length, from two to four miles wide, including sounds or 

 lagoons and creeks connecting them, and protected from the ocean by 

 sand beaches, with several inlets through these beaches, which are 

 generally timbered. These sounds or bays abound in excellent fish 

 and oysters, and form safe inland navigation in rough weather. Or. 

 the bay side, too, the upland is bordered by marsh and swamp two- 

 thirds its entire length, and on the north-east by marsh emptying into 

 a branch of the Great Egg Harbor river, which forms its north-eastern 

 boundary, thus bringing the upland of nearly the entire county within 

 easy access of these marshes for hay and vegetable matter for manure, 

 comprising over one-fourth of the whole county, more acres than there 

 are now under cultivation. A great portion of this marsh lies so high, 

 we are informed, that ordinary tides do not cover it, and the extreme 

 tides rise but four feet above it. The mud being solid, and so situated 

 that 25,000 acres of it might be reclaimed from the tides for about 

 five dollars an acre by reclaiming it in large bodies, it could be 

 then seeded down with the cultivated grasses, which would produce 

 double the quantity of hay of the salt grass, and be much more valua- 

 ble. This would make the marshes much more profitable for hay and 

 manure. 



In Salem county we learn there are 15,000 acres reclaimed 

 from the tides, where ordinary tides did rise two or three feet over 

 them. They make the best farm lands where they are high or kept 

 dry. Lime alone will keep up their fertility for many years. Good 

 marsh mud composted with slacked lime, twenty bushels of the former 

 to one or two of the latter, have made a very good compost for upland 

 in some places. If it will do as well with the Cape May mud or salt 

 marsh and on their uplands, they have no lack of resources for fer- 

 tilizers ; and their lands being sandy, it would seem to be the very 

 dressing adapted to improve them. Of all the cultivated grasses, clo- 

 ver is the most valuable for improving land. It makes excellent hay, 

 an abundance of pasture where the land is made rich, and is of great 

 value for soiling, to be returned to the land in some form, but is 

 invaluable as a green crop for turning under. A large part of it being 

 absorbed from the atmosphere while growing, and being turned under 

 while green, makes a good fertilizer for other crops, especially wheat, 

 making it a direct fertilizer, while other green crops turned under pro- 

 duce but little or no benefit to after crops; therefore the inference is 

 foir that they had precisely absorbed from the soil what they returned 

 to it. 



Soiling must be resorted to in Cape May county at no very 



