NORFOLK SOCIETY. 321 



added to the soil at an expense of one dollar and thirty-one cents 

 per acre, and the committee of the American Institute on farms 

 states that the crops will be from fifty to seventy-five bush- 

 els of shelled corn per acre, they having visited the field last 

 week." Professor Mapes adds, "During the last three years, 

 I have visited many farms and have advised modes of manur- 

 ing founded on the chemical constituents of the soil, desired 

 crops, (fee, &c., and in no instance has the experiment failed 

 to produce superior crops, — among them I may mention that 

 several have raised over one hundred bushels of shelled corn 

 per acre ; of wheat in one case, fifty-seven, and in several, for- 

 ty to fifty. Three hundred to four hundred bushels potatoes, 

 one thousand of carrots, nine hundred of parsnips, seven 

 hundred to thirteen hundred ruta baga turnips, &c., have been 

 frequently the result per acre of proper tillage and judicious 

 management." 



Similar facts and similar influences in regard to the chemical 

 analysis of soils, and the adaptation of manures, have come to 

 our knowledge, and which place beyond doubt the necessity 

 of a better understanding of this subject, by all who expect 

 success in the cultivation of the earth. Other instances in 

 which such results were produced by the mere rotation of crops,, 

 have been witnessed by a member of the Board of Agricultural 

 commissioners for this Commonwealth, during his recent tour 

 in Europe, instances in which very large crops were grown on 

 lands which had received no manure for years. So fully have 

 the beneficial results of the application of science to agricul- 

 ture been acknowledged, that all the foreign journals unite in 

 the opinion, that the only farming which can be relied upon 

 for remunerative profits, is that which is guided by scientific 

 intelligence. 



Shall we, then, profit by this experience? Or shall we con- 

 tinue the exhausting process of perpetual cropping, without re- 

 storing the productive energies of the soil? This has already 

 impoverished the once fertile lands of New England, and in 

 its desolating march has passed over many of the fair fields of 

 New York and Ohio, and is still wending its way to the •' far 

 west." So devastating has been this course of practice, that 

 41 



