134 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



we give hard-pan or ashy looseness. Water cannot rise and 

 fall in the one, because of the few capillary channels ; nor in 

 the other, because the channels are too large. It asks for 

 a full ration, and is given but half. 



Suppose we go to some primitive fertile forest, where the 

 axe and firebrand have not made havoc, and where half- 

 civilized man "with gun and dog impatient at the shot," 

 has not desolated the field, and study the evidences of 

 Nature's obedience to law, written in soil and plant. Count- 

 less plants both great and small furnish food for birds and 

 beasts innumerable. The rich, fine, compact soil, filled 

 with decayed and decaying vegetable matter, covered during 

 the winter, furnishes the ideal conditions for plant growth. 

 Here all refuse material is husbanded and used for production 

 the succeeding year, and is as unlike the liquid streams of 

 manure which escape from flooded barnyards and neglected 

 manure heaps as the practices of husbandry are unlike the 

 laws of agriculture. 



With plough and cultivator and right to dominion, with 

 God-given and God-like powers, knowledge and skill, we 

 are to begin the work of improvement. We are to select 

 the best and destroy the poorest ; this is the law. We are 

 to do more : we are to make that which was best, better ; 

 we are to assist, accelerate and direct the laws of evolution. 

 We are to command with understanding, in order that we 

 may be obeyed with alacrity. We are here to make things 

 more comfortable for plant, animal and man, to prepare the 

 way for that which is to follow ; we are to waste nothing, 

 but are to enter into our usufruct right to all the earth, in 

 order that all that is w T orthy may have abundant opportunity 

 to arrive at its best estate. How are plants and animals to 

 be improved, if not by destroying the poorer and by making 

 it more comfortable for the better? This is nature's mode 

 in forest and on prairie. 



Have we reached the limit of profitable improvement? Is 

 eleven and one-tenth bushels of wheat per acre, in the United 

 States, in 1889, the most profitable yield? Is twenty-seven 

 bushels of corn per acre the limit of the law of production 

 of the most common cereal in the country? On 78,019,651 

 acres, 2,112,892,000 bushels of corn! It must strike a 



