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In Illinois nearly two-thirds of the counties reported ignore rotation 
-in toto, while of the remainder at least half pay but little attention to 
it. Corn has been repeated for fifty years on alluvial bottoms, and 
wheat on uplands for twenty years. -An annual decline of yield has 
been a significant but too often unheeded commentary upon this ruin- 
ous practice. Our correspondent in Cass County remarks: 
Corn being our main crop, the only rotation is to either oats or wheat, the former 
producing a sure crop, the latter a very uncertain one. On land that has been under 
cultivation for a number of years, we raise two crops of corn and one of oats, thus 
making a rotation of three years; but one-half our best farmers keep about 50 per 
cent. of their land in pasture for seven years; it is then prepared for corn: a sod-plow 
drawn by two horses, followed by a subsoil plow drawn by two more, breaking the 
ground to a depth of six inches, completely covering up the sod; the ground is next 
well harrowed, check-rowed and planted. Ground thus prepared will yield from 
fifty to eighty bushels per acre, and will produce good crops for four years; then a 
crop of oats prepares it for two more crops of corn. The course thus described con- 
sists of seven years, four of corn, one of oats,and followed by two of corn again; then 
it is ready to be sown in grass again, which is done by putting in timothy and clover; 
about February and 1st March, broadcast, on land where corn grew the previous year, 
In the States west of the Mississippi the same general facts are ob- 
served. Rotation is almost unknown in three-fourths of the reported 
counties of Minnesota, in seven-eighths of those of Iowa, and in two- 
thirds of those of Missouri, while in Kansas and Nebraska it is but lit- 
tle more than nominal. Destructive repetitions of particular crops are 
too frequent to particularize. In Bremer County, lowa— 
The great majority of farmers break up the prairie sod in June if possible ; it is sown 
to wheat the following s pring, generally with a broadcast seeder, and then well har- 
rowed ; some few cross-plow in the fall, the same season it is broken; others plow the 
same direction it was broken and turn the furrows back. Wheat is usually grown 
upon this land two seasons in succession, and sometimes longer. Stubble-land of 
wheat and oats is almost invariably plowed in the fall. The land is afterward culti- 
vated alternately with corn and wheat or oats. Occasionally a piece is seeded with 
timothy or clover, or both, and mown for hay, or pastured for a year or tw9, and some- 
times longer, then plowed up and sown with wheat. 
One of our correspondents in Missouri writes: 
The farmers of this section mainly belong to that well-known class yclept “old 
fogies,” whose ancestors, hearing of this goodly land about half a century ago, came 
hither trom Kentucky and Western Tennessee, literally following the leadings of 
Divine Providence, upon whom they relied with unfaltering faith for support, doing as 
little as possible themselves to interfere with the Divine arrangements. 
Our correspondent in Nemaha County, Kansas, says: 
I came here in 1860 from New York, where I had farmed land worth $100 per acre, 
following a systematic rotation with good results. I commenced nearly fhe same 
course on our new prairie soil, excepting the manure and clover. I alternated corn 
and small grain, but found it would not answer; corn will not do well after small 
grain. I then adopted the plan of corn for two seasons, then summer-fallow; then 
spring grain, followed by winter grain; then summer-fallow again, and follow with 
corn. 
In three or four counties of Utah there are rotations of corn, small 
grain, and pease, but the order is not very uniform. In no other por- 
tions of the Territories have any approximations toward rotation been 
reported. 
On the Pacific coast rotation is but little known. In California, 
where the great staple wheat crop has been grown in destructive suc- 
cession, if is becoming common in some localities to very the crop 
every few years, either with a volunteer crop of wheat-hay, or by seed- 
ing in barley, oats, or corn. The increasing growth of weeds and the 
constant multiplication of foul seed is compelling some alternation of 
crops. In some counties, Humboldt for example, new land is planted 
from two to five years in potatoes, followed by several years of wheat, 
and finally by grass crops, which are sometimes continued till they run 
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