58 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



age, it should be excluded from cultivation and 

 given up to trees. Men often doubt the profit of heavy 

 manuring; and well they may, if three-fourths of 

 the fertilizers applied are soaked out and swept away 

 by flooding rains or sudden thaws and floated oif 

 to some distant sea or bay; but let all that is ap- 

 plied to the soil only remain there till it is carted 

 away in crops, and it will hardly be possible to man- 

 ure too highly for profit. 



IV. Trees, especially evergreens, may be so dis- 

 posed as to modify agreeably the average temperature 

 of your farm, or at least of the most important parts 

 of it. When I bought my place or rather the first 

 installment of it the best spot I could select for a gar- 

 den lay at the foot of a hill which half surrounded it 

 on the south and east, leaving it exposed to the full 

 sweep of north and north-west winds ; so that, 

 though the soil was gravelly and warm, my garden 

 was likely to be cold and backward. To remedy 

 this, I planted four rows of evergreens (Balsam Fir, 

 Pine, Red Cedar, and Hemlock), along a low ridge 

 bounding it on the north, following an inward curve 

 of the ridge at its west end ; and those evergreens 

 have in sixteen years grown into very considerable 

 trees, forming a shady, cleanly, inviting bower, or 

 sylvan retreat, daintily carpeted with the fallen 

 leaves of the overhanging firs. I judge that the 

 average temperature of the soil for some yards 

 southward of this wind-break is at least five degrees 

 higher, throughout the growing season, than it for- 



