216 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



After twelve years experience -with the system, Mr Quincy 

 writes, "From my own experience, I do not hesitate to state that 

 three cows may be kept during the summer season, in full milk and 

 in high condition, on a single acre" 



From an account of the inspection of farms by the St. Quivox 

 Club, Ayrshire, Scotland, we read: "About fourteen years ago, 

 Mr. Ralston sowed a five acre field with a variety of meadow grasses, 

 and laid down the land in the proper form for irrigation with the 

 liquid manure of the farm-yard diluted with water, of which he has 

 a suflicient supply. It has been done at a small cost, and has paid 

 extremely well. In good years, he has taken as much as sixty tons 

 of grass from an acre of land ; and during the present season, the 

 field has kept thirty cattle and sixteen horses since the third of May." 

 This account was dated August 7th. This field may have been 

 reckoned as Scotch acres, which are somewhat larger than ours. 



Adam Anthony of North Providence, R. I., entered upon a farm 

 in 1826, of the extent of seventy-two acres, suitable for tillage. 

 The land was very sandy ; and the crops of that year were five tons 

 of hay, two tons of oats, two hundred bushels of potatoes, two hun- 

 dred of turnips, some fruit and garden vegetables; worth, including 

 pasture feed, three hundred eighty-five dollars. He adopted the 

 soiling system. In 1847, he reports the produce of the farm as two 

 hundred tons, by estimate, of green fodder for soiling, one hundred 

 tons of hay, twenty-five tons of millet, seventeen tons of dry corn 

 fodder, six hundred forty bushels of potatoes, seven hundred fifty 

 bushels of Indian corn, fruit and garden vegetables, the value of 

 which, is three thousand five hundred seventy-five dollars; nearly 

 ten fold increase in the products of the farm. The stock consists of 

 about forty head, of which thirty-six are usually cows. 



Similar testimony might be very much extended, but it is unne- 

 cessary. My own experience corroborates the usual statements to 

 be met with on this point. 



2d. The saving of fencing. The present American system of 

 farming involves a prodigious expenditure of human energy for fenc- 

 incr. I have seen it estimated that the cost of fences in these United 

 States is more than six hundred millions of dollars, (600.000,000.) 

 Whether more or less than this enormous sum, it is so much invested 

 in human toil, a large portion of which might have been saved and 



