CAPITAL IN FARMING. 7 



considered, — yet it is certain that beyond this we cannot go. 

 For the pure stock-farm, the plains of the far West offer 

 their vast extent of common, with climate so mild as often to 

 render useless the labor of the herdsman in providing winter's 

 food or shelter. It may prove that under the influence of 

 those fertile fields and sunny pastures, live-stock will degen- 

 erate, — that the rugged hills and severer climate of New 

 England are better fitted to maintain the vigor of the parent 

 stock. Be this as it may, the greater price of less fertile 

 pasture and the long wintering far more than counterbalance 

 any advantage that could possibly be derived from nearness 

 to markets ; and the New England farmer has done well to 

 abandon all effort to make stock-raising generally profitable. 



Upon the methods and uses which now obtain in the various 

 branches of husbandry, it is scarcely the province of a gen- 

 eral essay to enter ; and especially with regard to details of 

 observation or experiment, such an effort could lead to no 

 satisfactory result. Indeed, it is chiefly owing to a desire on 

 the part of many agricultural writers, from the narrow basis 

 of their own experience, to establish rules for general prac- 

 tice, that a contempt for so-called book-farming has sprung 

 up among practical agriculturists. Not altogether is the 

 writer to be blamed. To be carried away with theories 

 which owe their birth to one's intellectual travail, is the 

 most natural thing in the world ; and the learner seeking 

 for truth, ought to take into consideration this enthusiasm of 

 a writer over his own productions, and weigh each statement 

 as gold of suspected coinage. The results of experiments 

 are seldom wilfully misstated, no matter how blindly truth 

 and error are confounded in deduction ; so that an impartial 

 investigation can scarcely fail to afford information of value 

 to the inquirer. 



I now pass to a subject, a full, consideration of which would 

 involve the whole science of agriculture, properly so called, 

 but which is nevertheless in its main points capable of concise 

 statement. I refer to the rotation of crops. To begin with 

 the simplest proposition, it is self-evident, that, besides the 

 elements of growth contained in air and water, a vegetable 

 substance is made up from constituents of the soil. Chem- 

 istry shows us what these elements are, and in what propor- 



