INFLUENCE OF KNOWLEDGE UPON AGRICULTURE. 223 



an improver of the soil. There is every reason to hope, there 

 fore, that such a system of husbandry may presently be found, 

 when, without any extraneous aid. and from the resources of the 

 farm itself, the largest crops may be obtained, and the powers 

 of production extended. The system of nature every where, if 

 man performs his duty, is a system of amelioration, and not of 

 deterioration ; it is every where a system of recuperative com 

 pensations, if man does not controvert or pervert its laws. 



That our crops, for example, are not what they might be, is 

 universally admitted. Within the last few years, crops of many 

 kinds have increased immensely. A few years since, fifty 

 bushels of Indian corn, to an acre, was deemed a large crop. 

 One hundred have been frequently produced. Thirty bushels 

 of wheat has heretofore been deemed more than an ordinary 

 yield. Fifty is now not uncommon. I have known sixty, and 

 nearly seventy, to have been grown, and. over a large farm, the 

 crop to have averaged fifty-six bushels. Thirty tons of carrots 

 per acre is the ordinary crop of a farmer within my knowledge ; 

 and I have on my table before me the authenticated statement 

 of eighty-eight tons of mangel-wurzel to the acre. I am 

 willing to admit that these are rare instances. Some of them 

 may be considered as single instances ; but it is obvious that one 

 well-established case is as good as a thousand in demonstrating 

 the practicability of that which is claimed to have been done. 



XXVII. INFLUENCE OF KNOWLEDGE UPON 

 AGRICULTURE. 



Here, then, there is an opportunity for the highest degree of 

 intelligence, as applicable to the improvement of agriculture; 

 for who can doubt that these extraordinary results are the conse 

 quence of that intelligence and enlightened skill, which are 

 equally the instruments of success in every other art. But it 

 seems idle to argue this point. All the improvements which 

 have been made in agriculture are as much the result of the 

 application of mind and of knowledge to the subject, as any of 



