386 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



Island Sound, and Long Island itself is in a great measure 

 composed of it. It is more extensive in the lower part of 

 Connecticut, than here. These light, sandy soils, as every 

 farmer who has them knows, are too dry, liable to burn 

 in summer, not able to retain manure when put upon them, in- 

 clined to blow about when ploughed up, miserable to hold any 

 kind of valuable grass, and never forming a good rich turf. 

 Soils derived from the decomposition of such rocks as form 

 Mounts Tom and Holyoke, are of far superior character. But 

 as these poor soils are here, our business is, to discover how we 

 may best improve them. In New England, generally, this 

 does not, thus far, seem to have been made an object. With 

 some most noteworthy exceptions, the system pursued is an 

 exhausting one ; to take every thing off, and to put as little 

 back as possible. No land will endure such treatment for a 

 great length of time, and this least of all, for it is not, at the 

 commencement, overstocked with fertility. Such poor, sandy 

 soils require to be carefully kept up. and constantly gaining. 

 They are then warm, pleasant, easy soils to work. How few 

 fields do we see around us, in which this state of things is to 

 be observed ; how few there are, on the contrary, which are 

 not continually running down, — where the crops are not poorer 

 and more scanty than they ever were before. I am willing to 

 leave this question to the practical men before me, whether the 

 farms on light, sandy land, in their respective neighborhoods, 

 are not, in very many cases, worth less than they were ten or 

 fifteen years ago ? 



If this is true, as I am sure it is, a state of things is disclosed 

 anything but creditable to New England farmers. This should 

 be called destructive rather than improved farming. Such a 

 deterioration is by no means necessary, for such land in various 

 sections of this and other countries, is now brought to a good 

 state of fertility, and is made to improve from year to year un- 

 der a system of constant cultivation. You have instances of 

 such judicious management within the limits of your own so- 

 ciety. 



The best method of improving these soils may well be pre- 



