FARMERS" INSTITUTES. 313 



practical advantage is there in it, and what practicable ends are supposed to be 

 reached by it? To these inquiries I suggest these inquiries, viz. : 



Ist. The sj'stem is favorable to the preservation and increase of the natural 

 fertility of the soil. Every judicious course of rotation is accompanied with a 

 judicious and uniform plan of manuring or enricliing the soil by the regular 

 and successive apiilication of the entire manurial products of the farm as gath- 

 ered from the stables, the stock yards, the henery, the ash-liouse, etc., and to 

 this is added, at least once in each going around, the important addition of a 

 good, and an increasingly good, grass or clover sod, by ploughing down, to 

 largely contribute to the fertilizing elements of the soil. 'No farmer that pur- 

 sues his avocation with enough interest and intelligence to adopt and carry out a 

 system of rotation will fail to see to it tliat tlie manure question enters largely 

 into all his calculations and measures. 



2d. A second advantage that grows out of the rotation system is its tendency to 

 render more uniform the fertility of the several fields and thus to equalize the an- 

 nual returns from the farm. If there is a difference in the fertility of tlie several 

 divisions, as there is in most farms, and it is the uniform practice to apply the 

 whole available enriching products to each field as it comes in its order of rota- 

 tion, then it is easy to perceive that an equalizing process is going on that will 

 eventually reduce the farm to an area of uniform productiveness, and thus 

 greatly aid in returning to the farmer uniform annual results of his labor. 



3d. Another advantage which results from this plan of working the farm is 

 the excellent opportunity which it brings around of effecting repairs and im- 

 provements. "When we s^art the rotation in any field as it comes in its order 

 there is a degree of interest naturally attaching to that point of operations, just 

 as an ambitious boy feels at the head of the spelling class, and it is compara- 

 tively an easy matter then to lay down drains, repair fences, fix the gates, 

 remove obstructions to the j^lough aud mower, or do whatever else can and 

 should be done in the way of bettering that field and fitting it for more satisfac- 

 tory work and returns. At another time it would not be quite so easy to do the 

 same things, especially if this was an understood part of the system. 



4th. I think, furthermore, that the rotation system of farming is favorable 

 to the destruction of weeds and noxious insects. In the year or years in which 

 a given field comes under vigorous and cleansing tillage, as it will in every good 

 plan of rotation, an excellent opportunity is again presented of making Aveeds 

 and injurious and unsightly plants diminish their miserable standing armies. 

 Insects, destructive worms, and grubs, I believe, regard with abhorrence even 

 greater than many farmers, do all approaches to a sytem of farming that regu- 

 larly and thoroughly and uniformly disturbs their haunts and operations. 



5th. To these greater advantages of the rotary plan of farming, I think I may 

 add one or two that are lesser, and still not to be forgotten, e. (/., this way of 

 managing the farm obviates all perplexity aud calculating as to what is to be 

 done, or the manner thereof. A plan of rotation once arranged and begun, we 

 go forward each year in the predetermined course and know precisely Avhat field, 

 what crop, and v*'hat business will be in hand as each month and season comes 

 in its order. 



Gth. And then I think that the rotary plan increases the pleasures as well as 

 the profits of farming. I do not mean the pleasures of profits, particularly, but 

 rather the satisfaction tiuxt comes from the consciousness of doing things in a 

 systematic and orderly way. It is akin to the pleasure which v;e all experience 

 when Ave look upon tiie beautiful motions and useful results of a finely adjusted 

 40 



