194 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



thoiif^ht ; but I find they did not do anything ; I seemed to 

 lose the wliole ; and for tlie last few years I have been in the 

 habit of placing them in very near the surface, harrowing them 

 in, or, if I plough at all, ploughing very lightly indeed. I 

 think the chemical operation by which all our vegetables are 

 grown takes place just at the surface of the ground. There is 

 where the air, the rains and the dews act most effectively — 

 right on the surface of the ground ; and I believe that a tap- 

 root, like a carrot or parsnip, does not so much draw its 

 nurture from the deep soil below as from the surface. I 

 believe that there is where the process is going on that drives 

 the root down, because there are no little fibres about these 

 things — or ought not to be, where they are raised as they should 

 be — to draw nutriment from the ground, as we say ; they are 

 almost entirely smooth, and the smoother we can get tliem, the 

 better. If they grow at all, it seems to me the process of grow- 

 ing must be carried on at the surface, between the top and the 

 commencement of the root, and it is there where the manure 

 needs to be put. But in raising an elm, we do not want to do 

 that, for the elm has a large top, and the roots run a great 

 distance ; tiiough there may be this same chemical action right 

 at the surface also, (and I presume there is,) yet its roots, 

 nature teaches us, draw much of their nutriment at a distance 

 from where this chemical action is going on. My own impres- 

 sion is, that we lose much of our manures by ploughing them 

 in deep. "When I came to Waltham, eighteen years ago, I 

 bought twenty-five acres of land, which was not worth anything. 

 It had been occupied by the Lyman family a great many years, 

 and would not bear anything but sorrel, and not a great deal 

 of that. I do not profess to have been much of a farmer, but I 

 have purchased a thousand bushels of grain a year, for the last 

 ten years, to be eaten by my stock ; and in addition to that, I 

 have purchased from two to three hundred cords of manure, 

 besides all I have made myself; and now I can raise a thousand 

 bushels of vegetables with the utmost ease, on land that would 

 hardly bear sorrel eighteen years ago. I had a very good crop 

 of corn this year. I do not profess to come up to the farmers 

 of Concord, who speak of raising a large amount of corn to the 

 acre, but I had two hundred and twelve well packed baskets of 

 corn from less than two acres of land this past season. That is 



