SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 477 



as many other good farmers, does not put his land 

 through the scratching operation and call it plowing. 

 His standing order is to plaw deep; a short piece of ad- 

 vice as applicable and almost as much needed in Illinois 

 and Indiana as it is in Mississippi. In fact upon many of 

 our wet prairies, we shall have to use subsoil plow before 

 we shall be fully successful in raising good crops in wet 

 seasons. 



Another evidence of the climate and season here I 

 "stop the press" of my lecture upon plowing to answer. 



Dr. Phillips has just brought in several stalks of as- 

 paragus 15 and 18 inches in length above the surface of 

 the ground. Only think of that, but don't weep, because 

 you are not a resident of the "sunny south." For be as- 

 sured I can and shall by and bye tell you things about 

 this same sunny south that will make you still more con- 

 tented to continue to live and enjoy life in our cold and 

 snowy, but healthy north. At all events if we do not 

 enjoy these early garden vegetables, we have no mus- 

 quitoes cousining around our ears in February, and while 

 the snow is flying and merry sleigh bells jingling, we do 

 not hear the remark from the "gude wife" that some of 

 us have, and some editors that I know of ought to have, 

 "how bad the flies are getting." 



Instead of the music of the bells, here is the music of 

 the birds and bees and frogs; not forgetting the lanbs, 

 gamboling over the green pastures of "winter grass," an 

 indigenous growth of the country, as valuable and im- 

 portant in this latitude as our native prairie grass is to 

 us in the north. Indeed we may yet find so formidable 

 a rival in the sheep business among the Mississippi 

 farmers, that they may "draw the wool over our eyes" 

 before many years, but not however until low prices and 

 over production has rubbed the cotton out of theirs. 



In truth I have no doubt that sheep will do well here 

 and would now be more profitable than the everlasting 

 and unchangeable cotton crop, that with some excludes 

 almost everything else, even the comforts of life. And 



