22 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ductiveness. The lands which were the best when seeded down, 

 remain down the longest, and so become equally' exhausted. Now 

 such a rotation as compels the breaking up of the sward at the 

 expiration of a certain time, though there may still be some vitality 

 in the grass roots, will be a safeguard against this depletion of the 

 soil. Decomposed vegetable matter is the great fertilizer. A 

 good sward is variously estimated to contain from twenty to thirty 

 tons of vegetable matter — say it is but one-half, from ten to fifteen 

 tons, and you have in an inverted sod a very valuable addition of 

 the best of manure. Let your grass ground run out and the sod 

 (on clay ground especially) becomes entirely gone : it has decayed 

 too so gradually as to be of no perceptible benefit to the soil. So 

 too if the land be kept up too long, the fibrous matter becomes 

 entirely decayed, and, if the soil be sandy, it will lack adhesion 

 and become too light. If it be a heavy soil, it will be too adhesive 

 and become baked and lumpy ; the rootlets bind the sand and 

 divide the clay. 



Any thing which helps to promote system in farming, is an ad- 

 vantage. R(jtation will superinduce a more methodical manage- 

 ment of other matters upon the farm. It is contrary to nature 

 that a man should be strictly systematic in one particular and not 

 at all so in others. The habit of regularity acquired in pursuing a 

 rotation, will pervade and show itself in all the other operations 

 of the farm. That man would be considered by all as a strange 

 anomaly, who, while adhering to a wise rotation of crops, was 

 still a thriftless and slovenly farmer. 



A system of rotation leads to doing more upon the farm, as well as 

 doing it better — to using more manure, as well as applying the same 

 to better advantage. Under the indiscriminate change system, 

 the farmer puts on what manure he can get and where it is most 

 convenient — perhaps a small quantity — thinking it will do for this 

 year, and next year he can go over it again. Under the rotation 

 system he sees that he must have manure enough for a certain 

 field — it must be a sufficient quantity, for it is to suffice for just so 

 many crops, and the field can have no rnore until its turn comes 

 round again. 



It does away with the small patch practice, so destructive of 

 time, with its short furrows, many turns and broken day's works, 

 as well as the more pernicious practice of breaking up larger fields 

 than can be manured, to be cropped and left in a condition more 

 barren than before. 



