No. 63.] 287 



the great object of Providence has been to " gather the waters togeth- 

 er and let the dry land appear." Upon this simple and primitive 

 truth, the ordinance that preceded the production of vegetable life 

 and the foundation of all good husbandry, the practical man invaria- 

 bly acts, when he wishes to increase his crops, unless he happens to 

 be mislead by authority, influenced by indolence, or prevented by 

 poverty, or unless his land is kept, as it frequently is, under aristocrat- 

 ic institutions, for the amusement and luxurious pleasures of its owner. 

 Thus we frequently see that English lawns and parks are kept in 

 grass for ages; that no plow is sutfered to break their velvet surface, 

 no human food to grow upon their plantations; but this depopulating 

 practice is what led for ages to the division of land into arable, mea- 

 dow and pasture; and is one of the causes that keep the people of 

 England in a state of starvation, while pampered opulence is chasing 

 the fox or the hare over thousands of acres. 



It is an unhappy circumstance, that in this country our agricultural 

 publications continue, by countenancing the practice of irrigation, to 

 pander to the prejudices of the ignorant, and minister to the gratihca- 

 tion of the indolent. There are none of the practices that an en- 

 lightened and improved system has tliscarded, less worthy of their 

 piaise or toleration. It is utterly at variance with their first canon of 

 improvement — a rotation of crops. It produces diseases of various 

 kinds, similar to those of Savannah hammocks and everglades; not 

 only among horses, cattle, sheep and swine — the foot-rot especially, 

 being one of its concomitants, and stagnant water, emphatically " the 

 pestilence that walketh in darkness," because the light of the sun 

 never dispels all the miasma that arises from its noxious vapors — but 

 it produces no greater amount of wretchedness among men and infe- 

 rior animals, than it does among trees, fruits and vegetables. It is 

 fatal to the life of both, with the exception of coarse and aquatic 

 plants. Irrigation itself is also fatal to every kind of tillage crop, 

 as well as to all our republican habits, and to any thing like an equa- 

 lity of condition — the corner stone of our northern institutions; be- 

 cause there is no more wasteful farming; no more expensive or less 

 productive lands for the labor and expense bestowed upon them, than 

 permanent grass lands or lawns. They may do for gentlemen or mil- 

 lionaires who are unable to devise ways of spending surplus funds; 

 but for men whose living is dependant upon their farm crops, they 

 not only cost abundantly more than they produce, but they take the 

 time and the manure that might be advantageously applied to enrich 

 the residue of the farm and make the whole a garden; they take more 

 than double the manure than cultivated crops, to which it is applied 

 under the surface — because the manure is exposed to all the hot suns 

 and drenching rains that occur during its decomposition; because all 

 the gaseous and volatile substances it contains are thus suffered to 

 escape; and because the land never gets the benefit of plowing in a 

 green crop — one of the most fertilizing improvements of modern 

 times; they encourage the growth of moss, which can onlj be killed 

 by large quantities of manure on the surface, and of weeds, which 



