SECRETARY'S REPORT. 87 



tical application of a system -wliich unites all these advantages in a 

 high degree, believes that it is his duty and privilege to submit it to 

 his fellow Colonists, and he feels certain, that if this plan is adopted, 

 it will render the country more productive, and conse(piently more 

 prosperous; it will, in the space of six years, convert worn out, 

 worthless, weedy land into smiling, rich and fertile farms, and the 

 small miserable animals of Lower Canada into valuable stock, and 

 all that without a greater expenditure of labor and money than is 

 incurred by the system actually in use. 



Before explaining his system, however, the author will take the 

 liberty of relating his own experience, and for greater clearness, he 

 ■will speak in the first person. 



I came to the country thirty years ago, and burdened with a debt 

 of forty pounds; I leased a worn-out farm in Lower Canada of 

 eighty-four acres, in the midst of a French population, and at an 

 annual rent of forty-five pounds. Well, in the space of twenty-one 

 years, I have paid my original debt, and saved enough to enable me 

 to purchase in the same neighborhood a much better farm than the 

 one I rented. The owner of the farm which I bought, was going 

 on every year from bad to worse, until he was forced to sell it, whilst 

 I, the tenant of a less productive farm, and paying rent all the 

 while, was enabled to buy him out, as just said. What was the 

 reason of this anomaly ? The Canadian was stronger than me, had 

 equally good health, and had no rent to pay. The reason was, that 

 he had no system ; he let his land become exhausted, and full of 

 weeds ; he let his stock starve ; he wasted his manure, the gold of 

 the farmer, and let everything go to ruin for want of method ; but 

 when I had got hold of this same farm, and had applied the system 

 which I am about to describe, the whole was brought gradually, 

 field by field, into good condition by the end of six years ; since 

 then, the condition of the land has steadily improved, and that by 

 resources drawn wholly from within itself 



Tlie system to which I allude, is known to all good farmers every- 

 where as the basis of all improvement, I mean that of a rotation of 

 crops. 



Rotation of Crops. There are two sorts of reasons in favor 

 of this plan of rotation of crops. 



First Because difterent plants draw from the soil different sorts 

 of food, so that one plant will grow freely in a soil which is worn 

 out as regards another. 



Second. Because the crops being various, the occasional failure of 

 one is not so much felt, seeing that the others furnish subsistence 

 sufficiently without it. 



The cultivation of a fair proportion of all the varieties of crops 

 whiidi Providence permits to grow readily, ought therefore to be 

 consider-ed as the best means of averting a famine ; and what Intel- 

 iigent farmer, with the case of Canada and L'eland before him, 



