68 American Horticuliural Society. 



the earth's surface, so fur as I have learned, that is both ferlUized ami irri- 

 gated by nature's hand. Fur more than live thousand years the river Nile 

 has, year by year, borne within its waters from the UKjuiitains of Central 

 Africa a rich sediment that, with the overtiow, has fertilized and watered its 

 entire valley of from live to twenty miles wide, and more than one thousand 

 miles in Ifiijjth. 



Is this the case here, or is it not rather the fact that most of the water 

 used is clean, pure water ? If such is the fact, your growing fruits and 

 grains require something more than is contained in it. Is it not also true 

 that, while your water supplies drink for the lhir.«ty plants, it also lirings 

 into solution such supplies of plant food already within your soil as enable 

 it to give you at present the bountiful yield of fruit of which we read and 

 hear? If this is so, and it seems to me that there is no doubt about it, are 

 you not drawing upon the great bank that nature's God has stored away for 

 future generations as well as for yourselves? Can you continue this course 

 indelinilely and still live? Can you continue year after \ear to take a part 

 from the whole, and still have the whole remain ? In short, if these points 

 are well taken, will not your system of " intensive cultivation," as now car- 

 ried on, result in the final destruction of your lands ? I ask these questions 

 in no spirit of complaint or fuult-linding. If I am wrong, I shall surely be 

 glad to be set right. If I am right, it seems to me that these questions 

 should receive serious consideration before it is too late to remedy the evil 

 except at a fearful cost. 



A few words more, and I will close. It is probably evident to the audi- 

 ence that such a system as I have briefly outlined can not be made to pay 

 expenses the first year, unless it is in exceptional cases. I believe that I 

 own no land that did not run me in debt the first season that I culuivated 

 it; yet it was fairly good, even for our rich western soil. The seci nil year 

 we always hope to make it at least pay all of its expenses, and the third year 

 to make some money for us. After this it is expected to improve gradually 

 in the quantity and quality of its crops, until very large ones are the general 

 rule, instead of the rare exception. 



I have followed the intensive system of tillage according to the best light 

 that I could obtain. To this has been added my own experience and close 

 observation for many years. One thing is certain : if I had purchased the 

 land that I now own at the time that I did. and at the price I did, and then 

 followed a slipshod, hit or miss method of tillage, we could never have paid 

 for the land, and shoulil have be<Mi driven oil from it long before this, or else 

 have remained upon it entirely at the mercy of our creditors; and to-day 

 wife and myself would have been asking ourselves and each other how we 

 should get through the wnter, and what ways and means we would devise 

 to keep up our courage for another year, and at the same time persuade our 

 creditors that we should at some time pay them their just dues. But by fol- 

 lowing the ojjposite system our land, though high-priced, hjvs furnished 

 money to pay for itself, interest and princijial. It has furnished money to 



