ESSEX SOCIETY. 



69 



and a half per cord, thus making a total of thirty-six dollars in 

 that department of expense. To prepare the land, and sow 

 an acre, and the seed for the same, is worth ten dollars. It 

 requires, to cultivate an acre of onions properly, the labor of 

 one man thirty-six days, including marketing, at an expense of 

 fifty-nine dollars, thus closing the list of expenditures, which 

 may be drawn up in a statement after the following manner : — 



For land rent, per acre, 



manure and drawing, . 



preparing the land, &>c., 



hoeing and weeding the first time, 



hoeing and weeding the second time, 



hoeing two days, 



pulling an acre, 



harvesting an acre, 



picking over four hundred bushels, 



carrying to Boston eight loads. 



Making a total of expenditures. 



u 



u 



li 



II 



(( 



$120 00 



sts in recording the 



The most pleasant part of my task consi 

 profits of the crop. I have never as yet been able to raise, on 

 an average, one year with another, more than four hundred 

 bushels of onions to the acre. Such has been the result of my 

 labor the past season. The profits accruing from an acre of 

 onions, at four hundred bushels per acre, and at an average 

 price of forty cents per bushel, is forty dollars. It has been 

 the practice among cultivators of onions, to spread on their 

 manure, of whatever kind it may be, and plough it in, in the 

 spring, to a depth scarcely sufficient to cover the dressing ; 

 year after year have they kept on in the old beaten track of 

 shoal ploughing, thus rendering the soil below the depth of 

 four or five inches, hard and unyielding, the result of which 

 has been a great sulfering of the crop, in a very dry time. It 

 is evident that a piece of land, ploughed to such a depth for a 

 long succession of years, must have a subsoil which the roots 

 of an onion cannot penetrate ; hence the necessity of deeper 



