AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 61 



clover seed per acre. Thresh the wheat and return the straw to the soil, 

 evenly spread on the surface, and let the clover grow until ripe the second 

 year and then turn it under, having dressed it in the spring with a bushel 

 of plaster per acre, and in the fall with thirty to fifty bushels per acre with 

 powdered lime. This is a sure and cheap mode of restoring old barren 

 fields to fertility. 



Other lands equally barren have been made profitably productive by tho 

 use of green sand marl, and in both cases without cost, because every year 

 the increased crops have paid the expense ; and I now contend that all the 

 worn out fields of all the old States — and their number is legion — may be 

 all renovated and made productive at only the cost of interest of money 

 upon the investment in fertilizers. No matter what the fertilizer may be, 

 whether lime, plaster, ashes, potash, guano, marl, phosphates, muck or 

 animal manures, so that the first application be used mainly for the purpose 

 of growing a manurial crop on the land — something to be buried in the 

 soil — something that will make it rich in a cheaper manner than can be 

 possibly done with any substance that is to be brought upon the land either 

 by an expense of money or labor. 



We are apt to look upon the whole system of Southern agriculture, here 

 at the North, as very much behind our own. But let me tell you that there 

 are very many Southern planters from whom very many Northern farmers 

 might learn some very profitable lessons. The system of renovating worn- 

 out lands, as described, and the system of rotation practiced by some corn 

 and wheat growers, where grass, hay and cattle were secondary objects, 

 might be studied to advantage by some of us who are wise in our own 

 opinion. 



We might learn some lessons too in swamp-draining, since one of the 

 most extensive drainers that I know of in the United States is to be found 

 in South Carolina. 



There is another subject of vital importance to all cultivators of hillj 

 lands, and it is one that this club might discuss advantageously, upon which 

 we can learn some valuable lessons from cotton planters in Georgia, 

 Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, in each of which States I have seen 

 large plantations, located upon extremely uneven surfaces, where every 

 furrow was plowed level, and every row planted level, no matter where it 

 begun and ended, so that the ends were on the same level, or how far the 

 ends might be apart. By this plan the absurd folly of planting up and 

 down the hill side is got rid of, and the washing away of the soil prevented. 

 This would be an important adjunct to any plan adopted to renovate some 

 worn-out fields once fertile, and now worthless, upon our hill-sides. 



Prof. Nash. — The process of side-hill ditching is borrowed from the 

 Belgians, and is one of great importance upon all light soils, but in New 

 England there are millions of acres of land valuable for grass that are 

 worthless for the plow, owing to the number of stones. The excellent 

 remarks read are only applicable to arable lands. Now much of this 

 New England pasture land is run out, as it is said, and no longer produc- 



