C9 



land is not exhausted ? If it produces as much of this 

 crop at the last as at the first, it would assuredly pro- 

 duce as much of some other crop, and perhaps more. It 

 stands as a certainty, then, that the land is as good as 

 ever, or a little better for general cultivation. 



But let us change the supposition again. Suppose 

 you had put on that land 25 loads of barn manure, com- 

 posted with swamp muck, 200 lbs. of Peruvian Guano, 

 and 300 lbs. of superphosphate, after taking off the first 

 crop of 1,200 lbs. and have got 1,600 lbs. for the second, 

 and suppose you had continued the same manuring to 

 the end of the five years, and had ended with crops of 

 from 2,000 to 2,500 lbs. It is clear as sunbeams, that 

 your land has been improving all the while, and that 

 now, if you follow the tobacco with wheat, your chance 

 will be good for 40 bushels an acre, and then as stout 

 clover as can grow, for three years at least, with no other 

 manure, ijthan that applied for the last tobacco crops. 



The Connecticut valley farmers, who apply a hundred 

 dollars worth or more of manure to the acre, and then 

 take off 2,500 lbs. of tobacco, understand perfectly that 

 the land is not exhausted, but that more than half of the 

 manure even remains in the soil for the benefit of the 

 after-crops. 



A five years' cropping with tobacco, according to the 

 supposition just made, may not be a commendable way 

 of farming. We do not so regard it. More changes 

 are desirable. But such a course, unwise though it is, 

 cannot exhaust land, if it is so cultivated and so manured 

 as to prevent a falling off in the crops. The truth, and 

 tue whole truth, on the question of exhausting lands, 

 and of keeping them good, or of making them better, is 

 ntained in the following three propositions. Using 



