A LESSON OF TO-DAY. 193 



To all which I make answer : No man ever lacked 

 fertilizers who kept his eyes wide open and devoted 

 two months of each Fall and "Winter to collecting 

 and preparing them. Wherever swamp muck may 

 be had, wherever bogs exist or flags or rushes grow, 

 there are materials which, carted into the barn-yard 

 in Autumn or Winter, may be drawn out fertilizers in 

 season for Corn -plan ting next Spring. Wherever a 

 pond or slough dries up in Summer or Autumn, there 

 is material that may be profitably transformed into 

 next year's grass or grain. In the absence of all these 

 and they are seldom very far from one who knows 

 how to look for them rank weeds of all sorts, if cut 

 while green and tender, or forest leaves, gathered in 

 the Fall, used for litter in the stable, and thence 

 thrown into the yard, will serve an excellent purpose. 

 Nay, more : I am confident that the farmer who 

 lacks these, but has access to a bed or bank of simple 

 clay, may cart 200 loads of it in November into an 

 ordinary farm-yard, have it trampled into and mixed 

 with his manure in the Winter, and draw it out iu 

 the Spring, excellently fitted to enrich his sandy or 

 gravelly land, and insure him, in connection with 

 deep and thorough culture, a generous yield of Corn, 

 even in such a season as the present. Dr. George B. 

 Loring, the most successful farmer in Massachusetts, 

 uses naked beach sand in abundance as litter for his 

 80 cows, mixes it with his manure throughout the 

 Winter, and draws out the compound to fertilize his 

 clay meadows in the Spring, with most satisfactory 

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