174 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



get them out of the ground easily in the fall. I was struck with 

 that remark, and have remembered it, because it was not quite 

 in harmony with my own views upon the subject. I am not 

 much of a farmer myself, though I try to cultivate some few 

 acres of land, and do it somewhat thoroughly. I am more in 

 the habit of spade husbandry than of ploughing very exten- 

 sively ; and I have noticed this, that where I have told my man 

 to spade the land two spades deep, and undertaken to raise car- 

 rots, it has required two or three years to recover from the 

 effects. It raised so much of the subsoil to the surface, that 

 even with very liberal manuring I have found it required two 

 years for the land to recuperate itself. 



I have had occasion sometimes to dig out rocks, when a great 

 deal of the subsoil was necessarily thrown on the surface ; and 

 I have always noticed that land so treated requires some two, 

 three or four years to recover itself from the effect of that 

 operation. In the end it is doubtless a great advantage to have 

 these stones removed ; but the life of the soil, for the time 

 being, has seemed exhausted by that process. "We bring to the 

 surface a cold, gravelly soil, and it takes a long time for the 

 dews and the rain and the sun to turn it into fertile soil ; and 

 yet they will do it in the end, and therefore it is better to have 

 these stones removed. 



Three or four years ago I had occasion to build a sidewalk 

 near my house, of heavy stone. No soil was put upon it, but 

 there has sprung up there a fair crop of grass, made there by 

 the heavens — by the action of the sun and the rains, and the 

 attrition of those particles of stone upon one another — ^for the 

 walk is not travelled much by passers-by. I think, therefore, 

 that bringing this cold soil to the surface, although it is injurious 

 for a few years, is ultimately highly beneficial. We thus 

 deepen the soil, and I think it is very important, especially if we 

 want to cultivate root crops, to have the soil very deep, 



I wish we could harmonize the different views with reference 

 to the use of the subsoil plough, which we hear from the gen- 

 tleman from Berkshire, and those which are entertained in this 

 part of the Commonwealth. In Berkshire they have a very 

 deep soil — an excellent farming region. Here around Boston, 

 where we live, especially in Waltham and that region, nature 

 has not done much for us. What we get there we have to get 



