160 THE CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



Plowing and subsoiling for the improvement of lands is 

 a practice which has been but little practiced, and much 

 less understood and appreciated in America. The practice 

 has been in use for several centuries in Europe where farm 

 land bears a higher value than it has here. But our cheap 

 lands are now nearly exhausted and it no longer pays to 

 make a farm, ruin it by wasteful culture, and then abandon 

 it to sterility and weeds, and seek a new one which will be 

 treated in the same manner. With a rapidly increasing 

 population, the division of the land among the citizens has 

 been nearly completed and the far distant territories do 

 not offer sufficient inducements for young farmers to go- 

 through the wasteful practices of their parents. A few 

 years ago this book would have been a premature work; 

 but now that the best culture of farms and the most profit- 

 able culture of farm crops are the only ways to success in 

 gaining a comfortable subsistence. Every known and possi- 

 ble method of improving the land and increasing its pro- 

 ductiveness, and every means for study and for acquiring- 

 information leading to these desirable ends, become of the 

 greatest interest to farmers. 



Hence practices and operations which would not be 

 thought of or undertaken a few years ago, now become in- 

 dispensably necessary, and what has been done in older 

 countries is to be studied and repeated with such improve- 

 ments as better knowledge and larger experience may make 

 possible. Plowing is a most important part of the farmers 

 art, but it has been scarcely studied at all, and has been 

 very imperfectly practiced hitherto by American farmers. 

 The plow has been used, not for the permanent improve- 

 ment of the soil, but merely to loosen it sufficiently to make 

 a bed for the seed and to cover up the debris of the preced- 

 ing crop. Mechanics and inventors have spent much thought 

 and study npon the perfection of plows and other imple- 

 ments of tillage ; and no other country has such a diversity 

 of excellent plows as ours; but the farmers have certain- 

 ly been neglectful of their opportunities and advantages in 

 regard to the use of the plow in improving their lands. 



