92 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



annual harvests, though not particularly luxuriant, 

 have partially exhausted the productive capacity of 

 the acres he inherited. He now garners from fifteen 

 to thirty bushels per acre of Com, from ten to twenty 

 of Wheat, from fifteen to twenty of Rye, from twenty 

 to thirty of Oats, and from a tun to a tun and a half 

 of Hay, as the season proves more or less propitious, 

 and just contrives to draw from his sixty to one 

 hundred acres a decent subsistence for his family ; 

 plowing, as his father and grandfather did, to a 

 depth of five to seven inches : What can Deep Plow- 

 ing do for him f 



I answer By itself, nothing whatever. If in 

 every other respect he is to persist in doing just as 

 his father and his grandfather did, I doubt the ex- 

 pediency of doubling the depth of his furrows. 

 True, the worst effects of the change would be re- 

 alized at the outset, and I feel confident that his 

 six inches of subsoil, having been made to change 

 places with that which formerly rested upon it, must 

 gradually be wrought upon by air, and rain, and 

 frost, until converted into a tolerably productive 

 soil, through which the roots of most plants would 

 easily and speedily make their way do^Ti to the 

 richer stratum which, originally surface, has been 

 transposed into subsoil. But this exchange of posi- 

 tions between the original surface and subsoil is not 

 what I mean by Deep Plowing, nor anything like it. 

 What I do mean is this : 



Having thoroughly underdrained a field, so that 



