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230 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



its own produce, it must also be conceded that the same farm ought 

 to be enriched faster and faster as the amount of its productions in- 

 crease ; and if the majority of farmers barely maintain their soil in 

 a given state of fertility by present management, it follows that any 

 increased effect obtained from a given source of fertility already in 

 common use, must result in a general improvement of the soil, and 

 advance the wealth and prosperity of the country. That such a re- 

 sult would be developed very rapidly, could the manure we make 

 on our farms be made to produce double the effect which it now 

 does, no one can doubt. 



I do not believe that the manure which is applied to hoed crops 

 in this country, reproduces itself to the farmer, as a general thing, 

 notwithstanding its auxiliary help from the atmosphere. This is a 

 serious consideration, if we believe that by securing all its valuable 

 properties, it ought to be instrumental in producing five or six times 

 as much. Take a field and apply to it for Indian corn the amount 

 of manure made from its own produce for five preceding years, then 

 raise three grain crops in succession, say corn, oats and wheat or 

 rye ; and at the end of that time, I am well assured, that the soil 

 will have lost more strength than was imparted to it by the manurei 

 of five years. Let it then be laid down to grass for two years, and at< 

 the end of that time it will have recovered the elements of fertility, 

 so as to be, generally speaking, about as good as it was before theij 

 manure was applied five years previous ; the formation of sod beingi 

 a'rejuvenating process. 



To be more particular, I should say that the soil of land which isi 

 dry and good for grain, would be somewhat improved at the end oil 

 the five years, if the grass seed took well ; and heavy clayey soilsyi 

 which are decidedly uncertain for grain without manure, will be 

 decidedly poorer. I consider the grass crop to be a mending crop, 

 and ever and anon tributary to the grain crop. Meadowland sustaiw 

 ing itself by the vegetable matter of decayed roots, would go tc 

 show that the crop derived but a small part of its support from the 

 vegetable matter of the soil. 



With hoed crops it appears to me that the roots are not nume* 

 rous enough, and the leaves too few to appropriate and secure any 

 great proportion of the virtues of the manure, which otherwise 

 leach away or evaporate. 



I once buried by the plough, in the spring of the year, about six^ 



