50 ■ AtfRItULTU^AL ESSAYS. 



plants fot a considerable lime. This, however, will depend on 

 the natural strength of the soil. 



Many of the American farmers, who believe the raising of 

 stock more profitable than grain, often err in supposing that 

 more stock can be supported by letting their old grass land re- 

 main for pasture, than by converting it to tillage ; and to intro- 

 duce the system of alternate husbandry, no doubt more capital 

 is required, besides a good deal of trouble in its execution, but 

 these are indispensable requisites in every improved system. 



As the result of great experience, the English farmers have 

 found, that alternate husbandry is most beneficial to cultivators, 

 and to the public ; that a farm managed according to its rules, 

 will yield a greater quantity of pioduce, than if any other sys- 

 tem is adopted; that if one half of the farm is kept under arti- 

 ficial grasses, and other green crops, as much live stock may be 

 supported and fattened upon the produce, as if the whole farm 

 was kept in old pasture : and that the other half, from the large 

 quantity of dung produced from the consumption of green 

 crops, will furnish as much disposable produce for supplyino- 

 the market, as if the whole farm had been kept in a regu* 

 lar sequence of corn crops. 



When a soil contains a great quantity of small lose stones, 

 and the surface been made smooth for mowing, and it has been 

 long appropriated to the use of meadow, the breaking it up with 

 the plough is a more troublesome and expensive operation ; but 

 even under such circumstances, it is believed great advantao-es 

 would generally be derived by breaking up such meadows, and 

 if the soil is sufliciently dry, or can be made so by any tolerable 

 expense of draining, to convert them to tillage by a rotation of 

 grain crops,* giving it occasional supplies of manure when it 

 can be had, until the roots are entirely decomposed, so as to be- 

 come a constituent of the soil. 



By this means the soil becomes fertilized, by exposure to the 

 salutary influence of the solar rays, and by reducing to compost 

 manure the whole mass of vegetable substances formed by the 

 roots of grass and weeds. 



It is well known that many of our farmers, especially those 



* Grain, in its most extensive sense, may be descriptive of seeds 

 of any fruit, though by common acceptation, it is understood to de- 

 scribe such as are used for bread. But when we consider it as a 

 necessary article in the rotation of crops, it may be extended to 

 signify not only Indian corn and the culmiferous crops, such as 

 bear seed in a chaffy head, as wheat, rye, barley, &c. but also Ic- 

 juramoua crops, as peas and beans. 



