232 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



Our primitive soil is generally rather poor and difficult, and soon 

 reduced by bad management. In many cases, if we do not enrich 

 and improve it, we had best forsake it and go to better land. That 

 system which enriches poor land in the least time, must be good for 

 rich land too. That which enables a poor man to grow rich, must 

 enable the rich man to grow richer. 



Experience has taught us here, that to enrich our land, we must: 

 apply the manure for our plough land at the time of sowing winter 

 grain, spread it on the furrow, and harrow it in wiUi the grain, which 

 leaves it just where we want it, near the surface ; or harrow the 

 ground first, then spread the manure, and plough in the manure and 

 grain together with hght furrows. 



Now here is the difference between the two systems : If we put 

 all the manure on for corn, on land rather poor and easily worked 

 down, the result is pretty good corn and oats, and poor winter grain 

 and grass succeeding, there being no manure to spare for those 

 crops. When the sod is again turned over for corn, it being poor, 

 the corn again requires barn-yard manure ; and thus the land is 

 kept poor, the grass being light, and the manure not increasing in 

 quantity. But let the disposition of the manure be changed : apply 

 it to the winter grain, and then we have good wheat or rye suc- 

 ceeded by good grass, plenty of fodder, an increased quantity of' 

 manure, and a sod formed, which, when the land is again ploughed I 

 for corn, will enable it to grow as luxuriantly as it did under pre- 

 vious management with the manure applied d'-ectly to it. The 

 manure is now left for the winter grain again : there is more of it, 

 and the land grows better very fast. 



Suppose the corn on the good sod, as good as it would have been 

 on the poor sod with the manure, what then ? Why it was more 

 cheaply fed : there was no volatile salts to escape ; none to leach 

 away, that I know of. The difference is like fattening cattle on wheat | 

 instead of Indian corn or roots ; only the one is a loss direct, the I 

 other a loss entailed ; one like paying direct taxes which we know, 

 the other like indirect taxes which we feel and do not know exactly 

 what the matter is. 



With the manure for winter grain, it prevents it from freezing 

 out in the winter and spring ; also saves the young timothy, and in 

 many instances lightens the soil so as to preserve the clover roots 

 of the year following. Grass being a mending crop, the land can 



