162 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ble, and for field culture, generally impracticable from its 

 expense. Rut so far as a farmer is a raiser of trees, it may be 

 of the greatest service. Young trees especially, are not only 

 benefited, but often actually saved, by a cover of leaves or 

 litter of moderate thickness placed round the foot to the 

 distance of a few feet. The roots of the tree are thus effect- 

 ually shielded, and enabled and invited to spread themselves in 

 the soil near the surface, wliich is of course the richest. If we 

 go into a forest or grove, and sweep away the bed of leaves 

 wliicli we find lying round the trunk of a tree, we shall generally 

 find many of the roots actually lying on the top of tlie ground. 



A third expedient, and perhaps the most effectual and useful 

 for obviating the effects of drought, is the frequent stirring of 

 the surface soil. This can never be done without essential 

 benefit. It would be going quite too far to say that it completely 

 supplies tlie want of rain, but it is certain, that in some way or 

 other it produces effects which no one would suppose before- 

 hand, a!id which no one who has ever attempted to test the 

 point by experiment, will ever question. Whoever stirs a 

 few feet of dry soil, will find that it soon changes color and 

 gathers moisture from whatever source, or in whatever mode. 

 "Wherever this measure can be resorted to, which is of course 

 only ill places where the plough or hoe can be used, it will be 

 found far more effectual than any other remedy which can be 

 applied with the same amount of labor. The latest and most 

 popular French writer on Horticulture points out the mulching 

 and stirring of the soil as the two leading remedies acrainst the 

 droughts which visit all parts of the globe frequently, and our 

 own country in a preeminent degree. 



As no human power can change our climate, and as there 

 seems no prospect of any amelioration of its severe winters or 

 its parching droughts, it is an obvious dictate of common sense, 

 to select such plants for cultivation, whether annual or peren- 

 nial, as can best resist its fierce extremes. On this point, little 

 or no information can now be given to New England cultivators. 

 The experience of two centuries has rendered any precepts 

 unnecessary, and our great agricultural staples are precisely 

 those, wliich, if the choice were now to be made, a wise cultiva- 

 tor would select at the present day. Of these, the best adapted 



