9 



tjalled " high farming " is the great panacea for all the 

 "ills that agricultural flesh is heir to," It would have 

 been absurd to recommend the " old country " system of 

 agriculture to the Pilgrim Fathers, Avith all the wilder- 

 ness before them, just as it would now be absurd to ad- 

 vise a settler in a valley of the Rocky Mountains to 

 adopt the high culture system of Japan or Belgium. 

 AVhen land is plenty and cheap, and markets poor, it 

 does not pay the farmer to cultivate highly. He can 

 obtain an equal amount of produce easier and cheaper 

 by cropping his land, and when it is exhausted, shifting 

 his operations to " fresh fields and pastures new." 



The more thickly settled the country, and the greater 

 the demand for agricultural products, the more thorough 

 the system of farming that will be most profitable. It is 

 doubtful if the high culture system of Belgium would be 

 profitable for us, even if practicable to adopt it ; still I 

 think it is time for us to take a long step in advance. It 

 is impossible to lay down a rule which will be equally 

 applicable to every one, for we are all more or less limit- 

 ed in the amount of available fertilizers. 



But I think it is safe to say that if we have more land 

 under cultivation than can be kept increasing in produc- 

 tiveness, it would be more profitable to turn a portion of 

 it to pasture and cultivate less. In other words, if we 

 find the tillage land of our farms is not annually increas- 

 ing in fertility, economy requires us to increase the ma- 

 nure or diminish the extent of land cultivated. 



Another point of importance is to so manage that the 



land cultivated each year should lie as much as possible 



. together. Many farmers pay no attention to . this, and 



cultivate hoed crops at parts of the farm remote from 



each other. The time lost in passing from one lot to 



