120 BOAED OF AGRICULTUEE. 



Dr. Riggs, of Hartford. Three years ago, I had a crop 

 of rye on an acre and perhaps an eighth— not over that — 

 where I have raised tobacco for years. My practice has been 

 to sow rye to plow-in for the next crop. After tlie tobacco 

 crop is off, I sow rye, and by the time the ground is ready to 

 prepare for tobacco the next year, my rye is four or five feet 

 high. But three years ago, I had an old-fashioned man for a 

 farmer taking care of my place, and he over-persuaded me to 

 let the rye crop grow and harvest it, it looked so nice. It 

 towered up so high, that I was a little proud of it myself. I 

 had previously put on sixty bushels of leached ashes 'from 

 Canada. By-the-by, there is a great deal of insoluble potash 

 in leached ashes ; the soluble potash is taken out in Canada ; 

 the insoluble sold to us : but it takes two bushels of unleached 

 ashes to make one of leached, and there is where we get an 

 advantage. I had the curiosity one day to measure this rye 

 in different parts of the field, and I found that the straw was 

 seven feet long, up to the commencement of the head. The 

 heads I did not measure, but they were very long, and the 

 observation of the whole neighborhood. When we harvested 

 it, instead of cradling it, for it was toppled over a great deal, 

 so that it would have been next to impossible to cradle it, we 

 went in and mowed it as we would mow a double swatli in 

 grass, having one or two to mow, and one or two to follow 

 after the mowers and*gather it up. They placed it one side 

 in small heaps, and then, when we bound it, we put two heaps 

 together. We mowed it close to the ground, so that the 

 stubble was not over an inch high. From that piece of an 

 acre and an eighth, I got forty bushels of rye, two tons of 

 straw, that I sold for $25.00 a ton, and about nine hundred 

 weight that I sold at the rate of -f 30.00 a ton. I estimated 

 that the field yielded me about $100.00. This was on tobacco 

 land, and the grain was very large, and the straw the strongest 

 and heaviest I ever saw. It was the " observed of all observ- 

 ers " in our neighborhood, as a rye crop. 



Now one word in regard to the profitableness. Tlie next 

 season, I raised tobacco on that piece, and for my tobacco 



