80 BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. 



more arable land than he can do justice to, and make profit- 

 able in thorough tilling. Of wood land and pastures hereafter. 



It is a great hindrance to successful farming to partially 

 cultivate twice as much land as one can manure and work 

 thoroughly. It needs no superior gift, as that of prophecy, 

 nor a column of figures to prove that if with a given amount 

 of fertilizer we can on one acre raise a crop equal to one 

 from the same amount distributed over five acres, we cer- 

 tainly save in time, labor and travel; and this same acre, 

 when heavily manured, will continue to yield large crops of 

 grass for years, while we are going on with others, improv- 

 ing in the same way. This is, in my opinion, the only 

 course that really justifies tobacco raising in this State ; a 

 piece of good land, after the heavy manuring and clean culti- 

 vation it has received for two years, will produce a great 

 crop of wheat, and a paying hay crop for four or more years. 

 A young farmer at one of our institutes not long ago said, 

 that when a boy, his flither, before leaving home for a few 

 days, told him and his brother to cart out a certain quantity 

 of manure from the yard on a lot of about an acre and a 

 quarter. The boys, obeying orders, and with no discretion 

 of their own, went to work with a will, cleared the yard and 

 spread the manure on the field, rather thick, as they thought, 

 and altogether so to the disgusted father on his return, find- 

 ing seventy-five ox-cart loads of manure spread on his acre 

 and a quarter. But time tardily justified the boys ; for on 

 that piece of land, for twelve successive years, grew more 

 grass than on any field of its size on the farm. 



Mr. Lilly, of Florence, near Northampton, has become 

 famous for his crop of hay, of which, from his meadow of 

 twelve acres, he cut in two crops seventy-six tons. He has 

 underdrained his lot, and from a capital bed of muck he 

 makes, with some stable manure, wood ashes, coal ashes, 

 fish, and everything that can be utilized, great piles of com- 

 post, which he applies at the rate of fifty loads to the acre. 



A year ago this fall, after mowing two crops, he turned it 

 all over and seeded with hcrdsgrass, cutting, last July, three 

 tons to the acre by actual weight, and two tons at the second 

 cutting. This is a good illustration of what may be done by 

 concentrating efforts on a limited space, rather than by dif- 



