CHAPTER VI. 
THE RECLAMATION OF BOGS AND SWAMPS, 
44,1 is so pleasant to the tread, so pleasing to the eye, 
441 to walk over a swamp on a fine June morning, that 
any attempt to convert it into a plain, even pasture 
marsh, would seem vandalism to the mere lover of 
simple nature. By so doing, the ever rustling sedges and 
rushes would be taken away, the waving cotton plants would 
be destroyed, the yellow irises, the golden marsh mallow, and 
the carpet of mauve bloomed cuckoo plants would all be 
obliterated from the landscape. These considerations were 
not taken into account in years gone by, when owners of 
swamps were able, with the assistance of capital, to carry their 
ideas into practice, and the “‘scaping ” of.snipe had perforce to 
give place to the lowing of cattle. Now that the wave of 
agricultural depression is on us, we find many instances 
where this order of things is reversed, and instead of swamps 
becoming marshes, many marshes are becoming swamps, 
because the pockets of their owners have been so bled by the 
times that they are powerless:to help themselves. 
It is an old English quotation that “hope springs eternal 
in the human breast,” and although many of us may not have 
the necessary funds at our disposal to carry out our ideas at 
the present moment, that happy day may not be as far distant 
as we imagine, and, looking at the bright side of things only, 
E 
