94 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



Take another aspect that of subsoiling hill-sides 

 to prevent their abrasion by water : 



I have two bits of warm, gravelly hill-side, which 

 bountifully yield Corn, Wheat and Oats, but which 

 are addicted to washing. I presume one of these 

 bits, at the south-east corner of my farm, has been 

 plowed and planted not less than one hundred times, 

 and that at least half the fertilizers applied to it have 

 been washed into the brook, and hence into the Hud- 

 son. To say that $1,000 have thus been squandered 

 on that patch t>f ground, would be to keep far within 

 the truth. And, along with the fertilizers, a large 

 portion of the finer and better elements of the ori- 

 ginal soil have thus been swept into the brook, and 

 so lavished upon the waters of our bay. But, since 

 I had those lots thoroughly subsoiled, all the water 

 that falls upon them when in tillage sinks into the 

 soil, and remains there until drained away by filtra- 

 tion or evaporation ; and I never saw a particle of 

 soil washed from either save once, when a thaw of 

 one or two inches on the surface, leaving the ground 

 solidly frozen beneath, being quickly followed by a 

 pouring rain, washed away a few bushels of the 

 loosened and sodden surface, proving that the law by 

 virtue of which these fields were formerly denuded 

 while in cultivation is still active, and that Deep 

 Plowing is an effective and all but unfailing antidote 

 for the evil it tends to incite. 



"We plow too many acres annually, and do not plow 

 them so thoroughly as we ought. In the good time 



