26G AGRICULTURAL ESSAYS. 



These considerations, one would suppose, are sufficient to 

 induce our farmers to improve their crops by a more thorough 

 and skilful course of cultivation. 



It is well known that there are men in our country who are 

 intelligent and industrious, who possess perhaps from thirty to 

 fifty acres of land, and yet are devoting their services to the 

 concerns of their neighbors, for the avowed leason, that they 

 caniot support their families on so small an extent of land. But 

 the)^and most other farmers in our country ,have yet to learn the 

 productive power of a perfectly cultivated soil. Instead, there- 

 fore, of seeking wealth by increasing the number of their a- 

 cres, it is hoped they will be induced to seek it in better modes 

 of husbandry* It is believed that, as a general truth, it may be 

 said the farms throughout New- England, containing one hun- 

 dred acres, were they divided into thirds, by quantity and qual- 

 ity, that each third might, by suitable cultivation, be made to 

 produce more than the whole hundred acre^do at present 



If the farmer, who barely subsists by toiling all the year oA 

 one hundred, or one hundred and fifty acres of land, thinks he 

 cannot afford to expend a cent more on the tillage of an acre 

 than he has been accustomed to do, let him enable himself to 

 do it by saving it in fencing, leaving out some of his lands that 

 bring him but little profit, by means of which he will have to 

 pay less taxes on tillage land ; or he may turn some of his til- 

 lage land to grass ; and so bestow the same labor and manure 

 on, say, a third less land in tillage. 



If lands are naturally so unproductive, or so badly cultivated, 

 a? not to yield to the owner a reasonable profit for his labor 

 and capital employed, it would be much better to abandon 

 them altogether, or bestow more labor and manure on only a 

 part of th^n, and let the remaining part be appropriated as a 

 pasture for cattle or sheep. 



A renovation in the general system of agricultural economy 

 hjay not be expected until the habits of our farmers, formed 



