STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 169 



exhaustion. Corn on the other hand never seems to suffer from 

 this cause. In August, of 1842, I saw a large field of corn, in 

 Licking county, Ohio, on the farm of a friend, which was said to 

 be the thirty-seventh successive crop grown on the same ground; 

 yet it stood, in wliat was considered a bad corn year, thirteen feet 

 high. From the analogy of Indian corn to the sugar cane, I 

 should infer that the latter would bear continued cultivation 

 through many successive years, provided the soil were naturally 

 highly fertile; and such I believe is found to be the fact. I have 

 previously suggested that, in the wise culture of cane tliere need 

 be very little if any exhaustion of mineral elements in the soil; 

 yet as every soil is not constituted with a high degree of fertility, 

 and as all culture is not wise, it is certainly advisable, from gene- 

 ral agricultural analogy, to rotate the culture of sugar cane witli 

 other crops whose drauglit upon the soil shall be most dissimilar 

 to that of the sugar cane. 



d. Mechanical culture. — The more frequently and deeply a 

 soil is stirred about the plant, provided due care be had of the 

 roots, the greater will be its progress. In a perfect climate and a 

 long season this might be done fearlessly; but in a short season 

 and with an imperfect climate, and in the use, moreover of fieeble 

 and late growing varieties of any particular plant, such a <fourse 

 of culture becomes harmful in the same way that high manuring 

 does in the section above. In both cases, and especially where 

 they act jointly, the plant is provoked into a late and immature 

 growth, which greatly jeopardizes its health. I do not know 

 what the facts are in the actual mechanical culture of the sugar 

 cane furtlier than that "the cultivator's aim is to get fine large canes 

 in as short a period as possible. (See Patent Office report 1818, p. 

 286. 



c. Wide 'planting. — Few facts are better esta])lished in agricul- 

 ture than the superior health of plants when j)lanted at sucli 

 distances as admit of the full enjoyment of air and ligh.t. Tlieso 

 iiilluences being indispensible conditions of vegetable growth, any 

 diminution of them, especially in a tropical plant, must be greatly 

 injurious to its prosperity, and result in lessened health, size and 

 value of secretions. Wide planting is found very important in 

 the culture of In<lian corn, not only to its health, but also to its 

 development and productiveness. Close planting is very noticea- 



