Page:The plains of Long Island.djvu/15

 a net profit of $26.62. No extraordinary expenditure produced this result. The farm of the late Mr. Charles Wilson, at Deerpark upon the Bush plains, thirty-seven miles from Brooklyn, furnishes the strongest evidence of the capacity of these plains for agricultural purposes. My notes of a visit to this farm in the summer of 1857, contain the following comments: "Mr. Wilson commenced his operations in the heart of this waste about five years ago, and has at present about eighty acres under cultivation. His place is in the midst of and is enveloped by the woodland "barrens." His crops are now as beautiful and luxuriant as bask beneath any sun. He has an extensive grapery, flourishing young fruit trees, and a delightful garden. He pointed out to me a large and flourishing corn crop, standing upon ground which last February was covered by a dense mass of scrub oaks and rank herbage. These were cut off, the land plowed, the roots picked up and converted into a fence, which separates the field from the adjoining waste, now not more rude and desolate than was the flourishing field six months agoago. [sic] The original price of this entire property was $5.00 per acre; the expense of preparing this particular lot for tillage was about $15.00 per acre, and I saw many acres which will yield a profit beyond all disbursement, that will make the land worth to him, as an investment, at least $200 per acre. The expense incurred, in clearing this corn-field, by Mr. Wilson was much heavier than is necessary, where economy is an object. This gentleman assured me that his application of manure to this land was not greater than equivalent of fifteen loads of barn-yard manure to the acre. He expressed the decided opinion, which was concurred in by others who had experimented on the subject, that the effect of manure was as favorable and enduring upon this soil as on any other."

Two years later I saw this farm, and it afforded exhibition of continued improvement, in the hands of a son of the former proprietor. In the year 1858 Mr. Wilson raised a crop of 3000 bushels of potatoes from ten acres of land, which he sold for $1,875. He expended per acre for manure $50.00 and for cultivation $37.50, making an aggregate $875.00, and leaving a net profit of $1,000. The same lot yielded a heavy crop of wheat last season, and now presents as beautiful a clover ley as ever excited a farmer's admiration. A piece of land, several miles east of Deerpark upon the plains, owned by Mr. S. Taylor, and embracing two and three-fourths acres, yielded, in 1858, seven tons of good hay, and a still heavier crop the last year. This land, I learn, had received no application of manure in the five preceding years.

A highly eminent gentleman who resides on the Island a portion of each year, informs me that it is habitual for the occupants of the gardens and orchards on the south shore, to transport the loam from the plains to replenish and fertilize their grounds. If this soil is worth transporting for such purposes, it can require no elaborate argument to prove its value for cultivation.

It is not necessary to pursue these illustrations. The facts I have adduced are sufficient to establish the qualities of these lands. In objecting