FARMERS' REGISTER, 



727 



driveo to the alternative of rejecting one, I should 

 not hesitate to cling to the atmoepherical, aa the 

 matrix ol" ail ; or ralher to (hat portion of it within 

 our reach, by other channels than those of farm 

 yards and animals. I would even prefer a confine- 

 ment to the single mode of extracting manure 

 from the atmosphere by vegetables, and applying 

 these vegetables to the enrichment of the earth 

 they grow on, by inclosing, to every other mode 

 of manuring land, excluding this. It works so 

 widely, so constantly, and at so small an expense 

 of labor, that properly used, it insures an annual 

 improvement ; and a constant |)rogres8 towards 

 /ertility, however slow, must terminate at it. Hu- 

 man lile ie said to be short, compared with what 

 we know and conjecture of time. Within one 

 fourth of one of these short cycles, I have known 

 a fourlbid increase of product from the same fields 

 produced chiefly by the inclosing mode of manur- 

 ing. Without however insisting on its title to 

 pre-eminence, it surely deserves to be considered 

 as a powerful auxiliary of the valuable modes of 

 manuring land, recently treated otl 



To make room for this invaluable article in a 

 system for improving our country, it is necessary 

 to explode snd banish a scheme of tillage, founded 

 in the massacre of the earth, and terminating in 

 its murder. It is called the three shift system, lis 

 course is, Indian corn, wheat, pasture. Under it, 

 the great body of the farm receives no manure, 

 and no rest ; and the result is, that the phrase 

 '• the land is killed and must be turned out," has 

 become common over a great portion of the Uni- 

 ted States. This system, the most execrable 

 within the scope of imagination, under which the 

 richest country upon earth could not live ; being 

 called an improved mode of agriculture at its in- 

 troduction, was blindly received under that char- 

 acter, and our eyes cannot even be opened by the 

 sound of our own melancholy confessions, "that 

 our lands are killed." As a system for extorting 

 crops from the earth, it is precisely similar to the 

 rack for extorting truth li'om the sufferer ; it 

 stretches, tortures, mangles obtains but little of its 

 object, and half or quite kills its victim. 



The system of inclosing, to manure the earth by 

 its own coat of vegetables, is at open war with 

 this murdering three shilt system, upon the sup- 

 positions, that the matter of these vegetables being 

 chiefly extracted from the atmosphere, must be 

 some accession of fertility to the earth, and that any 

 such accession is better than a perpetual exhaus- 

 tion. It will probably be conceded by every rea- 

 der, that both Indian corn and wheat are exhaust- 

 ing crops ; there can of course remain no doubt, 

 but that this system impoverishes land two years 

 in three. The only question then is, whether this 

 loss will be compensated, by grazing the field 

 bare during the third year. From whence is the 

 recompense to come? Soft from recent tillage, 

 and unprotected by p strong sward, the land is ex- 

 posed to all the injury the hoof can inflict. Thinly 

 sprinkled with an insufficient food, the restlessness 

 of perpetual hunger produces unabating industry 

 in the cattle, to tread it into a naked arena, closing 

 its pores like a road against refreshments from the 

 atmosphere, and exposing its fiat and naked sur- 

 face to heat, an agent of evaporation, able to 

 pierce and expel from stone itselK This three 

 shift system has only one merit ; honesty. In 

 theory it promises to kill our lands; in practice it 

 fulfils its promise. 



The inclosing system requires four ehifls, to 

 succeed tolerably well without manure, and ex- 

 tremely well with it. From a long course of ex- 

 periments, my result is, that atiiree shift system is 

 liir inferior to four shifts, without grazing either; 

 and that one fourth of a farm, properly managed 

 in the latter way; after having been worried by 

 the old rotation of corn, wheat and grazincr, may 

 in fifteen years be made to produce more than the 

 whole would previously do. I have kept a farm 

 in three and in four shifts for years, and the result 

 is extremely in favor of the latter, though its land 

 was at first of inferior quality. To this article lor 

 manuring our lands, objections are made, among 

 which, the want of pasturage, and the want of 

 epace for our labor, should we reduce the sizo 

 of our fields, are the most serious. Answers to 

 these objections, will be more apposite in consi- 

 dering the subjects of stocks, pasturage and la- 

 bor, should these essays ever get so far, than in 

 the midst of our present subject. That is, ma- 

 nuring, and (he object of this paper, is to con- 

 front the inclosing four shift system, with the 

 grazing three shift system, as modes of manuring 

 or improving land. 



To illustrate the theory "that vegetables extract 

 their matter chiefly from the atmosphere, and are 

 of course a powerful vehicle for fixing and bestow- 

 ing atmospherical manure on the earth,'' the fol- 

 lowing fact is circumstantially related, on account 

 of its complete application, and to expose it to in- 

 vestigation. Some years ago, a locust tree at 

 colonel Larkin Smith's, in the county of King and 

 Queen, and state of Virginia, received an injury 

 which made it necessary to cut away entirely the 

 bark around its body lor eight or ten inches, so that 

 i!s bark above and below was wholly separated, 

 without a cortical vein between. The wound was 

 entirely covered with a close bandage of soma 

 other bark, which lapped beyond the edges of the 

 wounded bark, above and below. And the tree 

 was left to its fate. The plaster bark never grew 

 to the tree, but the edges of the wounded bark, 

 gradually approached each other under its shelter 

 and after several years met and united. By the 

 time the wound was healed, the body of the tree 

 above, had become one third larger than its body 

 below it. And though several years have elapsed 

 the latter has not yet been able to overtake the 

 Ibrmer. The upper part of the tree, rooted in the 

 air, vastly outgrew the under, rooted in the earth. 

 Therefore it must have drawn either its whole or 

 chief sustenance from the atmosphere. Indeed, 

 between the bark and the wood of most trees, and 

 of the locust particularly, we find the chief chan- 

 nel of their juices ; and the cominunication of 

 these juices was utterly cut off, so that neither 

 portion of the tree could supply the other. If the 

 part of the tree fed from the roots, extracted from 

 the earth, (he food, which the earth had previously 

 extracted from the atmosphere; and if the earth 

 was reimbursed gradually by the atmosphere, 

 what it lost in feeding this part of the tree, then 

 even the small acquisition of the tree below (he 

 inlerdict to communication, aa well as the great 

 one above, is to be considered as wholly obtained 

 from the atmosphere, and might on that supposi- 

 tion be considered as probable ev^idence in liivor of 

 the theory, that vegetables get from the air and 

 give to the earth. But probable testimony is 

 superfluous, when the superior growth above so 



