218 
[Assembly 
of 18 inches will give three cords when dried. It may be cut from 
May to September. If the weather in autumn be very dry, the best time 
for cutting will be from the middle of August to the middle of Septem- 
ber. If cut the latter part of summer, or early in autumn, it dries more 
gradually, and is not so liable to crack and crumble, as when cut early 
in summer. The pieces are taken out with an instrument made for the 
purpose, from two to three inches square ; and if of good quality, will 
shrink about one half in drying. It is considered a day's work for a 
man, a boy, and a horse to cut out and spread a rod square. The man 
cuts it out, and lays it upon a light kind of drag made for the purpose, 
and it is drawn off by the horse, and spread by the boy as thick as the 
pieces can lay singly. After becoming dry enough to handle without 
breaking, it is made into piles, cob-house fashion, of from 12 to 20 
pieces in a pile. It will then require about four weeks of dry weather 
to render it fit to be housed for use. The top, or turf, is thrown back 
into the pits, from which the peat is taken ; and if well levelled, and 
the ground drained, it will, after the first year, give a large crop of foul 
meadow, or other lowland grass. Peat taken from land which has been 
many years drained, when dried, is nearly as heavy as oak wood, and 
bears about the same price in the market. 
^' The value of peat and swamp lands for tillage, is now pretty well 
known, and acknowledged. Some years since, I occasionally sold to 
my neighbors a few rods of my peat land, yearly, to be cut out for 
fuel, at three dollars per rod, being at the rate of four hundred and eigh- 
ty dollars per acre ; but finding this sum to be less than its value for 
cultivation, especially when laid to grass, I have declined making fur- 
ther sales at that price. I have raised upon my reclaimed meadows 
seventy-five bushels of corn, five hundred bushels of potatoes, or from 
four to five tons of the best hay, at a first and second cutting to the acre^ 
at a less expense of labor and manure, than would be required to pro- 
duce half this crop upon uplands. To render these lands productive j 
they should be thoroughly drained, by digging a ditch around the mar- 
gin of the meadow, so as to cut off the springs, and receive the water, 
that is continually flowing in from the surrounding uplands. If the 
meadow be wide, a ditch through the centre may be necessary, but this 
will be of no use without the border ditches. This being thoroughly 
done, and the surplus "water all drawn off, the next step is to extermi- 
nate the wild grasses, and herbage of every kind, that grow upon the 
surface. To effect this, the method heretofore generally^ and now by 
