314 STATE BOARD OF AGKICULTUEE. 



system of mechanism. It makes the farmer feel more as though he were the 

 intelligent directing head of his beautiful and useful machine, and less like the 

 sods and the clods which he manipulates. 



Perhaps you will ask how all this accords with experience, or whether my 

 views and utterances are mere theorizings and speculations, or the results of 

 personal experience. If such a question arises, I answer that these are the 

 demonstrations of my own experience. I have been following apian of rotation 

 in cropping and manuring a farm long enough to have completed three or four 

 revolutions in my farming course, and every reason Avhich I have jH'esented as 

 to the wisdom of systematic agriculture is fully justified in my experience. 



What plan or course of rotation is the best? That depends wholly on circum- 

 stances — the character of the farm, the nature of tlie markets, the leading 

 interests, whether stock, grain, etc. ; and here if where the wisdom of the far- 

 mer will exhibit itself, in settling this question of leading interest. Once settled, 

 and other things considered, the rotation is easily arranged. In my own plan, 

 stock is the main interest, and grain subordinate. To secure my end, I give 

 half my little domain to clover, a fourth each to corn and wheat. I put all 

 the manure on my clover sod, turn it down and plant with corn, seed it to wdicat, 

 without plowing, stock to clover, harvest once for hay and once for seed, pas- 

 ture one year, then start again. 



What particular benefits accrue from this particular course of rotation? To 

 this I answer ; 



1st. It is short and simple ; 



2d. It reduces plowing to the minimum quantity. I plow but once for the 

 entire course; 



3d. It reduces the cost of seeding to the smallest value ; 



4th. It alternates the crops so that no similar ones come twice in the same 

 course — an important consideration ; 



5th. It arranges so tliat the corn, which is a coarse feeder, takes the first turn 

 at the crude, fresh manure, and the wheat which follows — a more delicate feeder 

 — draws on the better prepared viands ; 



6th. As I sow nothing but clover for stocking down, it makes of this plant a 

 great mauural and sub-soiling agent ; 



7th. As I feed my entire crop of clover, corn, and fodder on my farm, and 

 use the Avhole of my wheat and clover straw for absorbants and litterage about 

 my stables, pens, and yards, making and applying a comparatively large annual 

 amount of manure, I cannot see why this system will not ensure a constantly 

 increasing fertility in my soil, and an annually increasing margin of profitable 

 productiveness — a theoretical inference which exactly tallies with my practical 

 experience. 



And this, Mr. President and gentlemen, is all that I have to offer on the sub- 

 ject in hand. 



Next was read the following paper on the same subject by Mr. A. H. Owens : 



Mr. Pkesident, Ladies and Gentlemen : — There has been so much writ- 

 ten and said about the rotation of crops by men of letters that it might be con- 

 sidered at first thought to be useless for one whose life has been spent among 

 the brush, or at the heel of the plow, to attempt an improvement upon the sub- 

 ject. But when we take into consideration that each writer has written from 

 his own locality and from his own standpoint, which, considering latitude, cli- 

 mate, and soil, may be a good one, we think, living as we do in central Mich- 

 igan, that we may adopt a system of rotative farming that will greatly increase 



