EXTENSIVE, INTENSIVE FARMING. 39 



The scientific basis on which I found my rotation, if elaborated, 

 would require more than my full time, and I shall merely review 

 the matter dogmatically. Crops should be rotated with roots 

 feeding- at unlike depths, that the several areas of soil may be 

 successively occupied. Unlike crops should follow each other, 

 to baffle the insect and fungus enemies that prey on roots, stem 

 and leaves of their several favorite crops. Crops have unlike 

 vaporizing powers, and between two crops there may be a vari- 

 ation of moisture under them amounting to often 200,000 or 

 300,000 pounds of water, and the difference, even the following 

 spring, is adequate to make a marked reduction of crop as 

 between land occupied by two crops in the preceding year, as 

 trial has shown. Crops take varying amounts of the elements 

 of plant food, — potatoes thirty-five pounds potash to eleven of 

 phosphoric acid, while wheat takes more of the latter than of 

 the former. Crops secrete different acids, or have power by 

 the acids of their roots of dissolving from the soil and of appro- 

 priating the several elements of plant food in different degrees. 

 The weight of the roots of crops varies from 1,500 pounds per 

 acre up to 8,000 pounds in the case of clover. The latter crop 

 has a special power residing in nodular growths on its roots of 

 gaining its nitrogen from natural sources, from the air mainly. 

 The decay of this heavy weight of roots and stubble will supply 

 nitrogen enough to grow two to three crops of the class of plants 

 like wheat, that have a low power to gain nitrogen. Crops 

 should be alternated that tillage and cover crops may follow 

 each other ; an open soil to favor oxidization, and cover crops 

 to take up the soluble material before it is leached out. 



Other reasons make it very desirable that the laws of rotation 

 be observed. New England farmers, of all farmers, have most 

 neglected a proper rotation. In it they will find strong assistance 

 in securing an increase of crops. 



The purchase of foods for stock is also a source of nutrition 

 to the farm, especially when the right kinds of food are pur- 

 chased. I buy the so-called protein food. A ton of cottonseed 

 meal contains forty-three per cent protein, about seven pounds 

 of nitrogen. A ton of bran does not contain half that amount, 

 and a ton of corn meal not half of that ; or a ton of cottonseed 

 meal has four times the manurial value of a ton of corn meal. 

 A ton of gluten meal contains nearly as much protein as a ton 



