BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 339 
No. 16. — A Report on some Analyses of Salt-marsh Hay and 
of Bog Hay. By ¥. H. Storer, Professor of Agricultural 
Chemistry. 
Ever since the settlement of New England, hay prepared from the 
natural grasses of the salt marshes on the seaboard and of the fresh- 
water marshes or so-called meadows,* which abound in the interior, 
has held a conspicuous place among the agricultural products of the 
country. Though far less important at the present time than it was 
formerly, the use of such hay is still common, It has had an unmis- 
takable influence upon the farming practices that prevail among us ; 
and the discovery of any new facts that concern it will be interesting, 
not merely from the novelty of these facts, but from their bearing upon 
the history and the development of agriculture in this region. 
The opinions of our farmers as to the worth of these “salt” and 
“fresh” hays, as compared with that of “ English” t or upland hay, 
upon the one hand, and that of straw on the other, have varied widely 
at different times and in different places, as will be shown directly. 
The merit of salt hay has often been extolled, and the general worth- 
lessness of bog hay has been insisted upon even more frequently. Of 
late years both sorts seem to be less generally esteemed than they were 
formerly, and there is manifestly a strong tendency on the part of 
agricultural writers to condemn the hay both of salt and of fresh 
marshes as a product that has usually very little real value as forage. 
But it is none the less true that such hay continues to be used for 
foddering animals over a wide extent of country, that the use of these 
natural hays is still a conspicuous and an interesting feature of Amer- 
* The word ‘‘meadow,” commonly applied in New England to low, boggy 
land, overgrown with sedges and other forms of coarse natural herbage, is an 
English provincialism, apparently peculiar to that part of the country whence 
many of the colonists came. ‘The prevalence of the term in Massachusetts is 
manifestly due to the same causes that determined the names of several of our 
oldest counties and towns. See Marshall, W., “The Rural Economy of Nor- 
folk,’ London, 1795, 1. pp. 312-318, and 2. 383. 
Tt That is to say, the hay from fields that have been regularly cultivated, and 
seeded down according to American custom with timothy, or timothy and 
red-top, or with a mixture of these grasses and clover. 
