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grass shoots and weeds will penetrate through the thin sod, and a healthy growth 

 of vegetation promoted, instead of a subjugation of the laud to agricultural 

 purposes. 



The months of May and June are the best for breaking prairie ; and should the 

 amount of work to be done be insufficient to require these entire months, the time 

 intervening from the twentieth of May to the twentieth of June, without doubt 

 is the most appropriate, although many persons commence earlier, and continue 

 later, than the time here indicated. 



Frequently a crop of corn is raised on the sod by "chopping in" the seed corn 

 with a sharp hoe or axe, or by dropping the seed along the edge of the third or 

 fourth furrow, and then covering it by the succeeding one, and often ten to twenty 

 bushels per acre is raised in this manner. 



An experiment was made by a practical farmer during the last season which 

 presents a new phase in corn raising on newl}' broken praiiie. An ordinary 

 furrow was turned, and immediately after another plough running deeper cut a 

 second furrow, from the same place, which was turned diiectly upon the first one. 

 This process was continued, until the entire field was subsoiled in the same man- 

 ner. On the upper furrows the corn was planted, and from the absence of the 

 vegetating portion of the grass roots decomposition was more rapidly promoted, 

 and this sod soon fell in pieces under the cultivator in dressing the corn. This 

 experiment i-esulted in a very heavy crop. 



Does not this successful innovation indicate advantages, (not only in growing 

 corn, but in a greater broken depth of soil for subsequent cultivation), that are 

 worthy the practical consideration of agriculturists ? 



Will not this experiment materially aid in advancing this important branch — 

 prairie farming ? 



The disparity in time and expense of " making a farm," in a heavily timbered 

 country, or on a well chosen prairie, is greater than would at fii'st seem apparent. 

 True it is, that most of us have listened with delight to the " loud sounding axe," 

 as with " redoubling strokes on strokes" the forest denizens were laid low with 

 a crash that was right musical, as the echo reverberated amongst the hills; — but 

 consider then the burning and clearing off the timber, at a cost of from five to 

 twenty dollars per acre, with the stumps remaining, as a memorial of hard labor, 

 for a quarter of a century — contrasted with two to three dollars per acre for 

 breaking pi-airie, which is as free from obstructions as though cultivated an hun- 

 dred years, and which suffers by the comparison ? 



" But the item of fencing ! Of enclosing tliese lands !" Based on careful esti- 

 mates the conclusion is reached, that fencing a thousand acres, in tlie ordinary 

 manner, is more expensive in a timbered than a prairie country; — besides the 

 prairie country can furnish examples where the first crop has paid for the soil 



