MANURES. 191 



Their pioneer life has its hardships, and its compensations ; and I 

 very much doubt the justness of most of the criticisms, which we, 

 who have different necessities, are so free to bestow upon them. 

 Assuredly, our intense system of cultivation, which is necessarily 

 confined to small farms, would fail if attempted on the frontier. We 

 may well affbrd to let them follow the path that their circumstances 

 have marked out for them, for, after all, it is but the thin surface 

 of the land that they injure, and while they will destroy it for the 

 sort of farming that they pursue, they will hardly touch the stores 

 from which a better system of agriculture will draw the means 

 for its renewed and more permanent fertility. 



The foregoing applies only to those who occupy lands of 

 *' inexhaustible fertility " — while they remain such. Later in the 

 history of these lands, we begin to hear of " insects," " blight," 

 *' wet seasons," " dry seasons," " weeds," and all the long list of 

 scourges which beset the path of all farmers, but which become 

 grave, only when the bountiful productiveness of the soil grows 

 weak and unable to overcome their devastating influence. There is 

 a long period between the eras of " inexhaustible fertility" and 

 *' absolute exhaustion," during which the science of farming should 

 come to the rescue, and save that which the unaided art of farming 

 threatens with destruction. Then we need to study the question 

 of manure^ — then, true farming begins. Let me not be under- 

 stood as undervaluing the intelligent management of his affairs, 

 which marks the character of the frontier farmer, or his useful- 

 ness in the world. I mean, only, that he is rather a manipulator 

 of what the earth gives him most freely, than a skillful stimulator 

 of her power to give ; and even this difference is far more marked 

 with reference to the question of manures, than to any other 

 branch of farming ; — generally it is not apparent when we come to 

 the breeding of animals. 



Lying between the frontiermen and the farmers of the Atlantic 

 slope, come those who cultivate the garden States east of, and 

 bordering upon the Mississippi River. There seems to be no reason 

 why they should be regarded in this connection as forming a dis- 

 tinct class by themselves. In so far as they are still independent 

 13 



