472 The Meadow. 
question is not too wet. It is supposed, however, that natural 
meadows or such as are annually flowed by streams bringing rich 
deposites and spreading them over their surface. Such lands 
usually are provided with sufficient nutriment to facilitate the 
growth of luxuriant crops. But meadows which experience no 
such gifts of nature must depend on the liberality of man, who 
strips them of their burthen, for means of giving sustenance to 
new crops. Among these means and of those which come within 
the reach of every farmer we notice first, the compost heap, which 
consists of various accumulations of all the decomposable sub- 
stances which can be collected and thrown together into one com- 
mon heap in the farm-yard where they are subject to frequent 
trampings of the stock, heaving up by the powerful agency of the 
swines' snouts, absorbing the liquid which pour in upon them on 
every side, until they become a mass of finely pulverized matter, 
equal in fertilizing properties to the rich deposits of the Nile. 
This is as valuable for a top dressing, load for load, as common 
yard manure, and should be applied in similar quantities by the 
acre. The best time for us to carry it upon our lands has been 
late in autumn, giving just time to fill the yard with a new sup- 
ply of turf, muck and weeds to act as absorbents during winter 
and spring. All manures should be carried to the meadow and 
spread just as the heavy fall rains are setting in. By so applying 
them, they become thoroughly incorporated by those rains with 
the soil and, while nothing is lost by evaporation or exposure to 
hot sunshine and high drying winds, the grass will show their in- 
fluence early in spring. 
Another general method by which meadows to a certain ex- 
tent, may be improved, is by turning water from the highway 
upon them. This water becomes valuable in a greater or less 
extent, to be sure, by the amount of travel over the road from 
which it is taken. On large public roads it must necessarily be 
very rich from the quantity of manure which in the succession of 
dry times become thoroughly incorporated with the dust of the 
highway. On all roads from the earth's being reduced to fine 
particles, it becomes very valuable. How much better to open 
small channels and turn the earth with the water which is bearing 
away, upon the adjoining lands, than to see it run off into dismal 
ditches by the way side, or in being borne lengthwise of the road 
until deep gullies are formed to be the perpetual annoyance of the 
traveller. We insist upon it, that the fertilizing power which 
may be taken from the highway every year will corapenstate for 
the few minutes labor three or four times in a year in more than a 
sixty fold proportion, and at the same time operate as an essential 
benefit to the highway, and we firmly believe that in seventy-five 
cases in a hundred the farmer will find an ample remuneration by 
