AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 159 



poor man, borrowed money to drain his land, has gradually 

 extended his operations, and is now reaping the benefits, in 

 having crops of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He is 

 a gray-haired Nestor, who, after accumulating the experience 

 of a long life, is now, at seventy-five years of age, written 

 to by strangers in every State of the Union for information, 

 not only in drainage matters, but all cognate branches of 

 farming. He sits in his homestead a veritable Humboldt 

 in his way, dispensing information cheerfully through our 

 agricultural papers, and to private correspondents, of whom 

 he has recorded 164 who applied to him last year. His 

 opinions are, therefore, worth more than those of a host of 

 theoretical men, who write without practice. He says that 

 the retrogression of our agriculture in the older States is 

 to be accounted for in our lack of drainage, poor feeding of 

 stock, which results in giving a small quantity of poor 

 manure, and in not keeping enough to make manure. He 

 applies 100 loads of manure to the acre at the beginning 

 of a rotation, and this lasts throughout the course. He 

 learned from his grandfather that no farmer could afford to 

 keep any animal that did not improve on his hands, and 

 that as soon as it was in good marketable condition it 

 should be sold, and replaced by another. This theory he 

 has always carried out, and, as a natural consequence, has 

 always got higher prices for his beef stock, and a ready 

 market even in the dullest times. 



&quot; Although his farm is mainly devoted to wheat, yet a 

 considerable area of meadow and some pasture has been 

 retained. He now owns about 300 acres of land. The 

 yield of wheat has been 40 bushels this year, and in 

 former seasons, when his neighbors were reaping 8, 10, or 

 15 bushels, he has had 30 and 40. We are informed by 

 him that there has been no such crop as the present since 

 1845, either in yield or quality; and the absence of weevil 



