214 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



To offset these advantages, we have the labor of raising and cut- 

 ting the food, and the feeding and care of the stock.* 



1st. The saving of land. This is a fact established by concur- 

 rent testimony everywhere. To what extent this saving has been 

 carried, we will show by introducing a few witnesses. Quincy says : 

 " European writers assert that the saving which results, is as one to 

 three ; others say, as one to seven. Others still, that the saving is 

 yet greater ; that is, one acre kept for soiling, will go as far as three 

 or seven, or more, kept for pasture, in the support of stock. On 

 farms where the whole soil is capable of being plowed, the economy 

 of soiling IS great. 



It may be, however, useful to observe that the reason for the 

 diversity of statement, in relation to the degree of saving, results 

 from the different ways in which the land used for soiling is culti- 

 vated for the purpose of raising food. Some satisfy themselves with 

 enriching the former pasture, and cutting the grass it produces, for 

 the soiling use. Others plow up the pasture ; raise cabbages, or 

 other succulent food, on which they support their stock. Now it is 

 plain, the result of a comparison of saving of land made between an 

 acre of enriched pasture, and an acre appropriated to the latter of 

 these modes of husbandry, must be very different. In either case, 

 the economy is sufficiently great." 



The maximum product of an acre of land has nowhere yet been 

 determined. The amounts obtained, often surprise us. 



From the reports of a committee of the British Parliament, show- 

 ing the condition of small farmers, we find much "of interest in the 

 results from exact and high cultivation, and much that bears directly 

 on the above proposition. 



In one case, of a man who held an allotment of four acres ; in one 

 year, he obtained forty-two bushels of wheat, two hundred and fifty 

 bushels of potatoes, and ten bushels of barley ; and kept two cows 



*In my search for reading, I found a small volume of Essays from the pen of 

 the Hon. Josiah Quincy, of Boston, published the present year, in which he has clearly 

 summed up the principal facts and reasonings of European farmers, and detailed his 

 own experience in a practice of the system for twenty years; keeping, a part of the 

 time, from thirty to thirty-five milk cows. I am under great obligation to the vener- 

 able author, in behalf of the farmers of Maine, for such extracts from his Essays as I 

 have adopted, as being better adapted to our condition and wants than anything I have 

 found written elsewhere. C. C. 



