120 [Senate 



only proper, but imperiously demanded. The skillful farmer then is 

 to determine whether he is to fallow his lands or substitute a crop in 

 its place, and this decision is of no little moment, as where the latter 

 course is admissible, the actual gain of the substituted one, is little if 

 any inferior to the main crop. Thus, if the fallow can be dispensed 

 with, and a crop of peas taken in the room of it, not only is there a 

 great saving of labor, but the pea crop may be considered as clear 

 gain. So with that most valuable crop, maize, which in many places 

 is made the substitute of a fallow, or precedes wheat in the course of 

 cropping. 



In the cultivation of the soil, there are many things that must be 

 taken into consideration, and each allowed their due weight, if good 

 crops are to be obtained, and the fertility of the farm kept up. Too 

 many look to immediate projfit only, and their treatment of the soil 

 corresponds with this idea. Future fertility is sacrificed; every thing 

 possible is taken from the soil and nothing returned to it — ^no time is 

 allowed for it to recover its exhausted energies, and the fabled de- 

 struction of the goose that laid the golden eggs, becomes a sober ve^ 

 rity. Neither fallows or rotation, are allowed to check the progress 

 of exhaustion ; and if the father found a rich soil, he leaves an impo- 

 verished one to his children. To remedy these evils, fallows and ro- 

 tations have been adopted with the best effects. By fallowing, the 

 humus in the soil is rendered more soluble, the weeds that spring up 

 between the successive plowings are turned under, and suffer decom- 

 position ; and atmospheric influences are allowed their full action on 

 the soil ; great advantages, as all must allow, but still hardly a com- 

 pensation for the additional labor, interest on idle capital, and the loss 

 of one crop, especially if all these advantages may be secured, with- 

 out these attending inconveniences. 



That this may be done is certain, if a course of cropping can be 

 adopted which shall afford a sufficient change in the draft made by the 

 plants on the different elements of fertility in the soil, and which shall 

 return to the soil as great a proportion of organic matter in the shape 

 of manure as is taken from it in grain. That this is possible, the ex- 

 perience of many skillful farmers within a few years, has sufficiently 

 demonstrated; since without fallowing, and by the application of 

 manures produced on the farm only, there has been a constant increase 

 of fertility, and consequent profit in the management of such farms. 

 It should always be recollected, that what has been done by one far- 



