88 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



a pocket edition ; his team a single horse ; his furrows 

 at most five inches deep. I paid him, but told him 

 plainly that I would have preferred to give the 

 money for nothing. He insisted that he had plowed 

 for me as he plowed for others all around me. " I 

 will tell you," I rejoined, u exactly how this will work. 

 Throughout the Spring and early Summer, we shall 

 have frequent rains and moderate heat : thus far, my 

 crops will do well. But then will come hot weeks, 

 with little or no rain ; and they will dry up thia 

 shallow soil and every thing planted thereon," 



The result signally justified my prediction. We 

 had frequent rains and cloudy, mild weather, till the 

 1st of July, when the clouds vanished, the sun came 

 out intensely hot, and we had scarcely a sprinkle till 

 the 1st of September, by which time my Corn and 

 Potatoes had about given up the ghost. Like the 

 seed which fell on stony ground in the Parable of the 

 Sower, that which I had planted had withered away 

 " because there was no root ;" and my prospect for a 

 harvest was utterly blighted, where, with twelve 

 inches of loose, fertile, well pulverized earth at their 

 roots, my crops would have been at least respectable. 

 When I became once more a farmer in a small way 

 on my present place, I had not forgotten the lesson, 

 and I tried to have plowed deeply and thoroughly 

 BO much land as I had plowed at all. My first Sum- 

 mer here (1853) was a very dry one, and crops failed 

 in consequence around me and all over the country ; 

 yet mine were at least fair ; and I was largely indebt- 



