MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



477 



One acre of broom corn was planted this j'ear, and cut October 7. The yield was 

 very good, considering the season. In its manufacture it is hoped to find labor for 

 the students, at seasons of the year when the farm offers very little. A silo has been 

 built and filled with two acres (about 30 tons) of sowed corn, for the purpose of test- 

 ing its value as to beef, milk, and growth production in comparison with the ordi- 

 nary dried fodder; the results of these experiments will be reported in due time. 



In regard to the system of rotation of crops, pursued upon the College Farm, your 

 committee would endeavor to be frank in giving expression to their views. Fully 

 in accordance with the sentiment, so universally prevalent that, in this State at 

 least, no farming can be a complete success without including within its arrange- 

 ments some intelligent method of rotation; but varying, as our State does, in the 

 most remarkable manner as to soils and climatic latitudes, the formulas for rotative 

 cropping must necessarily be numerous and changeful. Here, as elsewhere, the 

 operations in husbandry are nearly all of them subsidiary to the natural elements 

 surrounding them. The weather, markets, soils, and financial needs are necessarily 

 the leading factors of all agricultural efibrts, and any attempt to bring into general 

 adoption a rigid and uniform system of crop permutations cannot, we believe, become 

 a practical success. 



Much has already been written, and experiments extensively and carefully insti- 

 tuted, to suggest and determine lohat methods shall be attended with the most beneficial 

 results; and, if possible, what shall result in the most good to all; but thus far we 

 find an acquiescence in the general principle only. What shall be the order of pre- 

 cession with which crops should be rotated? What crops shall head the list, and 

 what and how many shall follow, and how long it shall take to complete the cycle, 

 are questions upon which we find the wildest divergence of opinion; and these we 

 believe are such as every farmer must study for himself and settle in consonance with 

 his own individual circumstances and surroundings. No book or newspaper schedule, 

 no college dictum, nor even the successful working of a neighbor's system, may be 

 just adapted to his farming; and the man who does not use his own brain to investi- 

 gate and decide for himself, will surely meet with financial disaster. As the cereals 

 and grasses difier from each other in their elements of formation, so farms and por- 

 tions of farms are dissimilar in soil, situation, and conditions, and no rule can be 

 given which will be of universal application, or even of much value, as local author- 

 ity. The object of all good farming should be to produce the largest yields of the 

 best paying crops, and at the same time keep up and, if possible, improve the condi- 

 tion of the fields. And very much of the latter can be accomplished by the intelli- 

 gent changing of crops, and it can never be omitted without manifest disadvantage 

 and loss. By some teachers of agriculture a system of absolute rotation, almost 

 imperative in its requirements, is strenuously insisted upon. Struck by the beauties 

 of the theory, and carried away by enthusiasm, they seem to imagine that, in pro- 

 claiming rotation, they have struck the philosopher's stone, which, by its magical 

 influence, will turn all harvests into gold. But we believe that every practitioner of 

 agriculture is convinced that, however much he may desire it, the difticulties in the 

 way of a single system, however well considered and scientifically arranged, if rigidly 

 enforced, are supremely unsurmountable, storms, deluge, and draught, hail and hurri- 

 cane, cut worm and weevil, fly, frost, and freeze, conditions of soil, and financial 

 pressure— a spectral group— are sure to disarrange and thwart the programme. The 



