272 THE CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



the best culture, and with the most economical practice in 

 regard to feeding stock and using the manure, the natural 

 resources of the land are so well husbanded that the soil 

 may be kept in a condition of fertility, quite equal to that 

 when the farmer first took possession of it. It is the busi- 

 ness of the conservative and skillful farmer to thus preserve 

 these resources from waste, by the practice of the most thor- 

 ough tillage; by the use of manures made upon the farm ; 

 and such artificial fertilizers as can be procured in the 

 markets. 



A few years ago, when the rich virgin soils of the west 

 were first opened to settlement and yielded enormous crops, 

 the early farmers who had been used to the comparatively 

 sterile soils of New England, which had been wholly ex- 

 hausted of all their available fertility by a wpsteful system 

 of agriculture, perceiving the surprising richness of the new- 

 ly broken land, thought there would be no end to its pro- 

 ductiveness; and ridiculed the cautions and suggestions of 

 experienced persons who foresaw that the universal laws of 

 nature could not be violated without producing the inevita- 

 ble results, and that the burning of straw; the repeated 

 crops of wheat -and corn; the removal of all the produce 

 from the land; and the waste of such manure as was made 

 by the feeding of the working cattle and the cows which 

 were the only animals kept on the farms; must certainly 

 end in the wearing out and exhaustion of the soil. These 

 farmers now experience the very same results which hap- 

 pened in their former homes, and which must occur every- 

 where. They have learned that there is a limit to the pro- 

 ductiveness of the richest soils; and that the end is reached 

 in time as certainly as the seasons roll around, and the years 

 come to an end. 



But even now, the very same unwise course of continuous- 

 cropping of the land, and the repeated growth of grain 

 crops is practiced in spite of past experience; and we may 

 well repeat the warning, that but a few years will elapse 

 and all the fewer as the culture is more perfect before par- 

 tial sterility will take the place of virgin fertility, and the 



