320 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



torn of the former. There are a few intervales of 

 rich, mellow soil, deposited by the inundations of 

 countless ages, where shallow culture will answer, 

 because the roots of the plants run freely through 

 fertile earth never yet disturbed by the plow ; but 

 these marked and meagre exceptions do not invali- 

 date the truth that nine-tenths of our tillage is 

 neither so deep nor so thorough as it should be. As 

 a rule, the feeding- roots of plants do not run below 

 the bottom of the furrows, though in some instances 

 they do ; and he who fancies that five or six inches 

 of soil will, under our fervid suns, with our Summers 

 often rainless for weeks, produce as bounteous and as 

 sure a crop as twelve to eighteen inches, is impervious 

 to fact or reason. He might as sensibly maintain 

 that you could draw as long and as heavily against 

 a deposit in bank of $500 as against one of $1,500. 



12. Finally, and as the sum of my convictions, we 

 need more thought, more study, more intellect, in- 

 fused into our Agriculture, with less blind devotion 

 to a routine which, if ever judicious, has long since 

 ceased to be so. The tillage which a pioneer, fight- 

 ing single-handed and all but empty-handed with a 

 dense forest of giant trees, which he can do no better 

 than to cut down and burn, found indispensable 

 among their stumps and roots, is not adapted to the 

 altered circumstances of his grandchildren. If our 

 most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each 

 per week from their incessant drudgery, and devote 

 them to reading and reflection with regard to their 



