FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROPS. 81 



hands of a predecessor; but when tlie farni came 

 into my own hands, I continued, for my own sake, 

 to keep the rabbits down. This gave me very little 

 trouble, for a'j^est settled on the rabbits, and, so 

 to speak, they all died off. Against my will, then, 

 in that spring I had no rabbits, and I narrowly 

 watched the crops. 



In the corn-fields, not at the sides so much as 

 out in the middle of the field, here and there came 

 the same bare places, the absence of corn on which 

 had invariably been charged against my rabbits. 

 On this particular season crops generally were in- 

 different, and the pest of agriculture, the '^ wire- 

 worm," abundant. 



I am sorry to say that it has come within my 

 knowledge that tenant-farmers, under a game-pre- 

 server, have refrained from sowing the headlands 

 immediately adjoining the covers, and then, on no 

 crop appearing, charging the deficiency against the 

 game* In other cases, and on poor lands peculiarly 

 prone to the wire- worm, or to fail in very dry 

 seasons, I have observed that a bushel and a half of 

 wheat to the acre, instead of two, was all the light, 

 white gravel and sandy soil received; and then, when 

 paucity of seed, poverty of soil, and the ravages of 



VOL. II. G 



