I. AGRICULTURE AND RURAL ECONOMY. 397 



after the first few years full crops grew with a little extra 

 manuring; and even cereals were grown consecutively with 

 the employment of about twenty shillings per acre of artifi- 

 cial manures. Experience, however, has shown that to pros- 

 ecute his system successfully, fifty or sixty shillings per acre 

 of manure must be applied annuall}'. 



But Mr. Prout has done more than to bring into superior 

 and profitable cultivation 450 acres of heavy clay land, worth 

 thirteen years ago not more than twenty shillings per acre. 

 He has inaugurated an almost original system of husbandry. 

 All ordinary rotations are ignored ; corn crops follow each 

 other on the same field for several consecutive years. "Wheat 

 has been grown for five successive years, and the cereals 

 have been repeated for eight years. Mr. Prout is no mere 

 theorist. He brought to his labors the experience acquired 

 from many years in Cornwall and in Canada. He deter- 

 mined to sell, year by year, the whole of his growing crops, 

 and to restore an equivalent in the form of portable fertil- 

 izers. For his consecutive corn crops Mr. Prout only desires 

 deep, thorough cultivation, extirpation of weeds, and a regu- 

 lar supply of manure. His crops are sold a week or ten days 

 before they are ready for the harvest, the neighboring farm- 

 ers being his principal buyers, and superintending their own 

 harvesting and threshing. The labor question troubles Mr. 

 Prout less than many of his neighbors. His steam- tackle 

 economizes both horse and hand labor, and keeps his labor 

 account under thirty shillings per acre. He expends up- 

 ward of 1200 annually on portable manures. Bones, min- 

 eral superphosphate, guano, and nitrate of soda are generally 

 preferred. The average annual receipts of his farm are 4800, 

 out of which it is estimated that he has an annual profit of 

 825. That the consecutive grain crops taken off have not 

 exhausted nor deteriorated the land is evident from the im- 

 proved quantity and quality of the growing crops, and the in- 

 creased value of the farm, which would now bring double the 

 price paid for it by Mr. Prout. Very few land investments, 

 or any description of investments, pay, like Mr. Prout's, a fair 

 interest on the outlay, and double their value in thirteen years. 



The farm of Mr. Middleditch, before referred to, has been 

 treated in a very similar manner, and with the same encour- 

 aging results. 



