XLIII. THE SWALE 



"Bubble, bubble, flows the stream, 

 Here a glow and there a gleam; 

 Coolness all about me creeping, 

 Fragrance all my senses steeping, — 

 Spice wood, sweet-gum, sassafras, 

 Calamus and water-grass, 

 Giving up their pungent smells. 

 Drawn from Nature's secret wells." 



— Maurice Thompson. 



Waste land is land we have not learned how to use. 

 Much of it is too dry, and lacking water — the prime requi- 

 site for plant growth — it produces little, even of wild crops. 

 Much of it is too wet and, therefore, unsuited to our agri- 

 cultural methods, though nature produces on it her most 

 abundant crops. Much of it is too rocky, and unsuited to 

 the use of our implements of tillage. Deserts and rocks 

 and swamps overspread vast areas of the earth's surface. 

 But miniature waste places of like character appear in sand- 

 ridge and stony slope and swale on many an inland farm. 



Let us study the swale a bit — that most interesting and 

 most productive of waste areas. We will find it among the 

 tilled fields, where their gentle slopes run together, forming 

 a depression that is poorly drained. We will find it over- 

 spreading the level surface of some miniature valley between 

 upland hills, or by the stream-side or at the head of a bay 

 or pond. In such places the crops that we know how to raise 

 on farms will not thrive. There is too much water. The soil 

 is soft under foot. Though black with humus, and enriched 

 with the washings from surrounding slopes, it is sour, and 

 unavailable to our field crops. 



It has its own crops, and they are never-failing. Always 

 it is a flowery meadow, densely crowded with plants of many 

 kinds in interesting association. It is a place of rushes and 



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