farmers' miscellany. 271 



assurance of every grain crop sought to be obtained therefrom. 

 Consequently, that portion of the farm under tillage should be 

 small in comparison with that of the same number of acres of dry 

 land. Eut with the treatment which such land usually receives, 

 the amount of manure made from the produce of the farm is too 

 insignificant to maintain, much more to increase, its fertility. The 

 common practice is to plough it up when the grass runs down, 

 and take from it several meagre crops of grain, before it is again 

 laid down to grass ; then succeed two or three middling crops of 

 grass, before it degenerates to the old standard, again inviting or 

 compelling the owner to renew his impotent efforts to increase its 

 fertility. 



But such management is all wrong. The attempt to manage 

 hpavy land, the same as though it was dry, in order to renew the 

 crop of grass upon it, necessarily involves frequent ploughing, 

 I with the application of little or no manure to the greater part of 

 ; it, from the insufficiency of the supply; consequently, the land 

 grows poorer and heavier by the operation. For soils which are 

 naturally too stiff, but have been lightened by vegetable matter, 

 speedily degenerate under tillage, and become less porous as the 

 vegetable matter works out ; leaving it compact, and heavy, and 

 unfitting it for the growth of plants ; so that it requires a very suc- 

 cessful new seeding with grass, to again lighten it up and restore 

 it to its former good estate. Such a system, then, should be 

 adopted with such land, as will not diminish the amount of vege- 

 table matter upon the surface of the sotl. If it is desirable to 

 plough the land, let it be up but one season as a summer fallow, 

 and sown early with winter grain, and seeded with timothy in the 

 fall, and clover in the spring; that enables the young grass to feed 

 up the old, so that by the time the old roots are decomposed and 

 appropriated to the use of the new crop, a more luxuriant growth 



jis obtained, and the amount of veo;etable matter in the soil in- 

 . ... . . 



creased ; or, in other words, its fertility, or power of production is 



increased, which must be attributed to the large share of nourish- 

 ment which plants derive from the atmosphere (being, according 

 |to Liebig, nine-tenths of the whole,) that makes the old roots a 

 oasis for nine times their weight of vegetable matter to be grown 

 apon, or in the soil. This new estate can be maintained without 

 aaanuring, as I shall show hereafter. Such, in my opinion, is the 



