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to its renovation and to succeeding crops, it may be better to 

 apply the manure and labor to two acres than to one. Not- 

 withstanding such exceptions, it may be laid down as an estab- 

 lished rule that the best cultivation, and, consequently, most 

 productive cultivation, is to be preferred ; and that whatever 

 land we cultivate should be cultivated to as high a degree as 

 possible. I confess the only substantial objection which I ever 

 heard made to producing, where practicable, one hundred bush- 

 els of corn to the acre, was that made to me by a farmer in 

 Franklin county, that " it was too much trouble to husk it." 

 To how much consideration such an objection is entitled, I 

 leave to the judgment of others. The amount of corn annually 

 produced in Massachusetts is reported by the Valuation Com- 

 mittee at l,775,073f bushels. The fraction in this case would 

 seem to imply an extraordinary degree of exactness in ascertain- 

 ing the quantity ; but persons familiar with the manner in which 

 these returns are made, will regard this only as an approach 

 to exactness. It probably falls considerably short of the actual 

 amount ; but the amount, whatever it may be, ought to be 

 largely increased. Acres and acres of land, now comparatively 

 unproductive, might be placed under a course of productive 

 cultivation ; and the estimates and accounts already given of 

 expenses and returns show conclusively that Indian corn, at 

 prices which it usually bears among us, is a most profitable crop. 

 The practice of hilling corn has now generally gone into 

 disuse. The labor of cultivating the corn was considerably 

 increased by the practice of half-hilling and hilling ; and, 

 so far from the heaping up of the earth round the plant 

 strengthening it against violent winds, it seemed to serve only 

 as an edge or fulcrum over which the stalk of the corn was the 

 more easily broken. The corn being cultivated on a flat sur- 

 face, without this artificial support, accommodates itself to its 

 situation by throwing out the more abundantly and strongly 

 those natural roots or shoots by which it establishes itself 

 against the wind ; and is ordinarily able to right itself after be- 

 ing blown over. 



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