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[Assembly 
manure will be required, and, after all, the surface will not become so 
compact, nor the produce by any means so great. 
" Should meadows be found too soft and miry to admit of their being 
ploughed in the summer or autumn, and the expense of turning with 
the hoe should be thought to be too great, I would advise ploughing in 
the spring, when the frost is out to the depth of three or four inches, 
carting on manure, and then sowing or planting at a convenient and 
proper season. The art of reclaiming these low meadows, consists in 
taking off all the surplus water by judicious draining, and in thoroughly 
exterminating the natural herbage and grasses. This being effected, 
we have our rich bottoms equally as productive as the deep alluvials 
of the west, and obtained at a cost and sacrifice infinitely less. 
" The third particular in which peat lands may be considered valuable 
to the farmer, consists in furnishing him with a very important ingredi- 
ent for his compost. Peat is made up principally of decomposed vege- 
table substances, with a portion of the lighter particles of vegetable 
mould, washed in from the surrounding highlands. But when taken 
fresh from the pit, it contains certain antiseptic properties, injurious to 
vegetation, which must be absorbed or neutralized, by a combination 
with other substances, in order to render it food for plants. This may 
in some measure be effected by exposure to the action of the air and 
frost. Where the surrounding uplands are composed of gravel and 
sand, the peat or swamp mud may be called silicious, and is less valu- 
able for manure, especially if the adjacent uplands rise abruptly : when 
composed principally of clay, the peat is aluminous. This is frequent- 
ly found resting on beds of marl, and is considered much richer and 
more valuable for the compost heap. 
** I have annually, for some years past, used on my farm some hun- 
dreds of loads of peat mud, which is either thrown into my hog-sty, 
or mixed with fresh stable dung, or with lime. When mixed with 
green stable manure, the proportions are two parts of peat mud to one 
of dung ; and I am confident, from repeated experiments, that a load 
of this compost, well mixed and fermented, will give as great a pro- 
duce, and a more permanent improvement to the soil, than the same 
quantity of stable manure. In this opinion I am not alone. Other ac- 
curate and intelligent cultivators have made similar experiments with 
similar results. 
