116 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



ing it for crops, while a field lately tilled is in turn taken for pasturage, the various tilled 

 fields may often be utilized with profit in completing the rotation. 



Sheep especially, are very beneficial in improving the fertility of the soil, as is seen in 

 English husbandry. They can be as successfully reared at the South as in other sections of 

 the country, since it has been found that they are as healthy in the cotton-growing states as 

 those of the North, while the time of grazing is much longer at the South than at the North, 

 thus giving a better opportunity to utilize pasturage in rearing them. 



Besides, cotton seed will furnish a cheap and nutritious feed in winter, and aside from 

 the wool product, sheep on cotton plantations are worth their keeping simply for the weeds 

 and briars they will destroy, and the fertilizer they furnish to the soil. We believe that the 

 proper management of sheep on cotton plantations, will prove one of the most potent aids in 

 restoring fertility to partially exhausted lands, as well as maintaining the fertility of such 

 as have been properly tilled. 



Dr. Lawes, of Rothamsted, England, found, in his experiments on unmanured rotation, 

 extending over a period of more than thirty years, that upon an unmanured soil, where the 

 crops were entirely removed, such cereal products as wheat and barley continued to give a 

 considerable yield after what are commonly described as restorative crops have almost ceased 

 to exist on the land. He refers to them as follows: 



&quot;The experiment may be described as a struggle for existence not one, however, where 

 the fittest survives, but rather where each crop is allowed to get what food it can from an 

 ordinary unmanured soil, while other plants are prevented from interfering with its opera 

 tions. This experiment has been going on for thirty-four years, and adds one more to the 

 many proofs we possess of the fact that the graminaceous plants which yield the cereal crops 

 have a far greater power of obtaining food from an unmanured soil than any other description 

 of plants. At the commencement of the experiment the land was in high condition, and the 

 first crops of both turnips and clover were large; since then the former have arrived at a 

 point where they resemble weeds rather than turnips; while the red clover, when repeated at 

 the end of the second period of four years, died off altogether; it was then considered 

 advisable to grow in its place beans, which, except on one occasion, have proved a very small 

 crop, amounting to not more than about eight bushels per acre. The last crop of barley 

 the ninth of the rotation yielded between twenty -six and twenty-nine bushels per acre, and 

 the wheat crops have also continued fairly good. We have, therefore, evidence that upon an 

 ordinary soil of fair quality, the cereal crops can obtain a supply of food, where the so-called 

 restorative crops have failed to do so.&quot; 



Whatever the system of rotation may be, or whatever the nature of the soil, it is well 

 for the farmer to bear in mind that good crops cannot be produced without proper manage 

 ment, and that that management has for one of its main features, a sufficient supply of manure 

 to furnish the elements of plant food to the soil that is expected to produce so abundantly. If 

 we are to have satisfactory results in the rearing of live stock, we expect to feed these animals 

 with a sufficient supply of proper food; but many farmers seem to think that lands can con. 

 stantly produce large crops with only a meagre supply of plant-food furnished for this pur 

 pose. This is a great mistake, as any farmer whose practice involves this principle will learn 

 sooner or later, for as a general rule, lands will produce and remain in a state of fertility and 

 exempt from exhaustion, only in proportion to the proper amount of fertilizing material 

 applied to furnish the elements of growth to the crops they produce; and if they are con 

 stantly forced by successive cropping without this aid, exhaustion must follow as a natural 

 result. 



