No. 112] 595 



their corn, or other crops, in very dry weather ; but the more 

 they hoe and work among it, and tffectually do it with good and 

 deep hoeing, the better the crop. I believe this has been the case 

 with my crops for the last two years. Last summer and fall was 

 remarkable dry, so that many corn crops failed, and some oats, 

 which plainly indicates that the crop depends on the state the 

 land is in more than it does on the chances of weather — of wet 

 and dry. Thus, barley or o.ats, being sowed on a piece of land 

 well prepared by tillage and manure, will come up and grow well 

 without rain, when the same grain ^sown on another part of the 

 same land, and not thus manured and tilled, will scarce come up 

 at all without rain, or if they do, will wait wholly for rain for 

 their growth and increase. The hoe also, particularly the horse- 

 hoe, for the other does not go deep enough, produces moisture for 

 the roots from the dews, which fall most in dry weather; and 

 these dews seem to be the most enriching of all moisture, as they 

 contain a fine black earth, which will subside on standing, and 

 which seems fine enough for the proper pabulum or food for 

 plants. As a demonstration that the tilled earth receives an ad- 

 vantage from these dews, dig a hole in any piece of land, of such 

 a depth that the plow goes to, fill this with powdered earth, and 

 after a day or two examine the place, and the bottom part of this 

 earth and bottom of the hole will be found moist, while all the 

 rest of the ground at the same depth is dry; or if a field be tilled 

 in lands, and one land be made fine by frequent deep plowings, 

 while another is left rough by iiisufhcient tillage, and the whole 

 field be then plowed across in, the driest weather, which has con- 

 tinued long ; every fine land will be turned up moist, and every 

 rough land as dry as powder, from top to bottom. 



Mr. Harmon's crop of wheat, grown at Wheatland, was a very 

 extraordinary one, on so broad a scale, and perhaps the name of 

 Wheatland might have originated from its being peculiarly adapt- 

 ed to thafcrop. Ilis system was to sow wheat on his laud every 

 .alternate year. Whether that system will increase the fertility 

 of the soil, without depreciating the crop, is a problem as yet 

 unsolved. Although liis crop appears greatly to exceed ordin- 

 ary crops of the coilntry, there is a considerable deiluction to be 

 made : in the first place there is two years' interest on the land, 



