SOILS AND FERTILIZERS. 113 



believe, that pioneer settlers of the Miami Yallej, 

 wishing, some years after settling there, to sell their 

 farms, advertised them as peculiarly desirable in 

 that the barns stood over a creek or " branch," 

 which swept away the manure each Winter or Spring 

 without trouble to the owner ; and I have myself 

 grown both Wheat and Oats that were very rank and 

 heavy in straw, yet which fell so flat and lay so dead 

 that the heads scarcely bore a kernel. Had I been a 

 wiser, better farmer, I should have known how to 

 stiffen the straw and make it do its office, in spite of 

 wind and storm. 



[And let me here say, lest I forget it in its appro- 

 priate place, that I am confident that most farmers 

 sow grain too thickly for any but very poor land. If 

 one thinks it necessary to scatter three bushels of 

 Oats per acre, I tell him that he should apply more 

 manure and less seed that land which requires three 

 bushels of seed is not rich enough to bear Oats. He 

 might better concentrate his manure on half so much 

 land, and save two-thirds of his seed.] 



I do not hold that the remarkably rich soils I have 

 instanced needed fertilizing when first plowed ; I 

 will presume that they did not. Yet, having never 

 yet succeeded in manuring a corn-field so high that 

 a few loads more would not (I judge) have increased 

 the crop, I doubt whether even the richest Illinois 

 bottoms would not yield more Corn, year by year, if 

 reenforced with the contents of a good barn-yard. 

 And, when the first heavy crop of Corn has been 



