326 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Thirteen bullocks, four weeks, , $40 00 



Eighty-eiglit sheep, two weeks, ,....,.... 10 00 



$1,175 00 



If a farm has a stream of water upon it, I would recommend that peat, 

 lime, clay, loam, all sorts of manures, organic, mineral, soluble and insolu- 

 ble, be applied by water, rather than any other process ; because it can be 

 done at much less cost, and with better agricultural results in solution and 

 suspension. And it will be found better for the interest of farmers to cul- 

 tivate a small piece of ground well, rather than a large piece ill. One acre 

 of market garden has produced twelve hundred and fifty dollars, and I da 

 not believe the average annual return of the arable land in the whole United 

 States is twenty dollars per acre ; and the reason is, that the surplus capi- 

 tal of our country is invested in railroad shares, mining companies, &c., 

 instead of agriculture. We are truly an agricultural people, still agricul- 

 ture does not form in our general or college education, as it ought, an hon- 

 orable portion ; the consequence is, the honest farmer is looked down upon 

 even by the honest blacksmith, and in the busy city is called a bumpkin, in 

 the legislative halls, an ass. This would not be the case if a department 

 of agriculture was appended to our schools and colleges, where a patient 

 professor might explain the most judicious modes of drainage, irrigatiouy 

 tillage, course of crops, feeding stock, arranging buildings, &e. Then when 

 our merchant princes retired from the toils of business, the want of agri- 

 cultural knowledge would not be felt, and their theoretical iuformatiou 

 would lead to practical experiments of value. 



The grand error of the farmers of this country, is their inordinate desir© 

 to grasp a territory of land on which to commence their operations, instead 

 of concentrating capital, talent and exertion, within circumscribed limits. 

 It would be well to bear in mind that it is next to impossible to improve, 

 efifectually, stiff clay land without buildings, for a less sum than one hundred 

 dollars per acre. For example, drainage will cost $35, subsoiling, fallow- 

 ing, &c., $35, manuring $80. You may travel all over our country, and 

 then over Europe, and you will generally find that all farms might be more 

 profitably cultivated than they are, from the fact that all men are prone to 

 commit the error above mentioned. In our country, when a gentleman 

 makes up his mind to became a farmer, he purchases a farm, and then puts 

 out at interest all his available funds, and because the farm that has been 

 worked fifty years without manure, will not support his cattle, horses, dogs, 

 and himself, soon becomes disgusted. How difi"erent is this management, 

 from that of our European friends, who never undertake farming without 

 capital. A tenant of Lord Leicester expended on a farm of 1,200 acres, 

 in twenty-six years,, one hundred thousand dollars in artificial enrichers, 

 and two hundred thousand dollars for oil cake. 



Mr. Hudson, another of Lord Leicester's tenants, expended in thirty 

 years, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for oil cake, and one hundred 



