LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 349 



realize after a trial. I have had full experience of this in Maryland, having 

 brought the value of a thousand acres, after years of toil and labor, from SIO 

 to $60 per acre, and repaid its cost. The difference in its original and 

 improved yield during that period which represents the measure of loss by 

 former mismanagement, would have been a fortune in itself. It has been 

 estimated that 100,000,000 acres of these lands have been thrown out of 

 cultivation in the south. Beware of a similar experience in the west. You 

 are on the road to the same ruin, which can only be averted by prompt use of 

 restorative agencies, and the exercise of an enlightened judgment in all the 

 operations of agriculture." 



An agricultural writer says : " There are some peculiarities of season which 

 render the cultivation of wheat quite as profitable, and even more so on light 

 soils than on heavy ones; still, on an average of years, the firm, deep soil 

 retains the preponderance. Here is, however, another truth of far higher 

 importance, in a practical point of view, than that involved in an inquiry into 

 the natural capabilities of various soils for growing wheat; and this is the fact, 

 'that with few exceptions nearly every kind of land, whether composed of clay, 

 chalk, gravel, or sand, will produce paying crops of wheat if drained, cleaned, 

 and brought up to a certain pitch of fertility, by high farming, — a term which 

 comprehends three principal operations, namely, relieving the soil from all 

 superfluous water by drainage, ridding it of weeds, and filling it with manure in 

 a solid or liquid state." This only refers to wheat, but I take it that all other 

 crops can be grown in the same manner. Dr. Madden, in his prize essay on 

 the question, ''What has science done for agriculture?" lays down, among 

 others, these two propositions : 1st. Cultivated land, when properly taken care 

 of, gradually becomes richer and richer notwithstanding the increased quan- 

 tity of produce annually removed from it. 2d. If the same plant be cultivated 

 for several years successively on the same spot, the soil much more rapidly 

 deteriorates than when a variety is kept up. A popular succession of crops in 

 England is the four-fold or Norfolk system, in which half the arable lands 

 are in grain crops and half in cattle, or forage crops annually. The merit of 

 this course is held to be that its main features can be retained, and yet exten- 

 sive variation be introduced in its details. Mr. Caird gives as his opinion that 

 the average product of wheat per acre in twenty-six of the thirty-two counties 

 in England visited by him, is 26| bushels per acre ; which is 14 per cent higher 

 than it was estimated at in the same counties by Arthur Young, a century ago. 

 An English farmer, said Mr. Webster after his visit to England, looks not 

 merely to the present year's crop. He considers what will be the condition of 

 the laud when that crop is off, and what it will be fit for the next year. He 

 studies to use his land so as not to abuse it. His aim is to get crop after crop, 

 while still the land shall be growing ietier and better. 



CULTIVATION. 



Another great element in the way of progress is better cultivation. This is 

 never to take the place of fertilization, but to go with it. We have too much 

 regard for the idea that the number of acres cultivated measures the impor- 

 tance of our farming. This is not true. The market gardeners, who fairly 

 cover their laud with manure, drain deeply and so thoroughly cultivate that 

 they often require the labor of one man for the season on a single acre, raise 

 crops that would astonish the average farmer, and at the same time make it 

 pay. A prominent farmer in northern Ohio lately wrote to an agricultural 

 paper, that "on his farm during the last three years, an addition to the- 



