76 ON TURNING IN CROPS AS A MANURE. 



jects will be more fully accomplished if a very light covering is drawn 

 over the embedded crop, than if it be buried deep in the earth. The 

 field referred to above, has been cultivated almost exclusively with a 

 plough drawn by one horse. 



There seems to be a difference in the opinions of those who have 

 written, and perhaps of those who have made personal trial of this 

 method of cultivation, whether it is best to cover the crop when green 

 or suffer it to remain till ripe and after it has become dry, then to 

 turn the furrow upon it. It is the opinion of your Committee that 

 neither should be adopted as a universal practice. On sandy and 

 dry lands, we must think that the crops turned in when green will 

 work the greatest benefit. On clay and stiff lands, the dry may do 

 as well. The season of the year when the work is done, to justify a 

 little variety. In the midst of summer, the crops should be used 

 when green ; late in the fall, it may do as well when it is dry. There 

 13 one serious objection, which will often operate against working the 

 crop when matured and dry : in most instances the year will be con- 

 sumed by the process ; while, with the other practice, a crop can be 

 raised the same season to be gathered into the store-house or barn. 

 One argument used in favor of dry crops, that it is following out the 

 order of nature, where we see the ripened fruit and the seared leaf, 

 falling to the ground and mixing again with the earth from which they 

 were nourished, and in their own decay, originate the material for the 

 renovation of the beauties and glory of the coming season, might be 

 regarded as sound, if a simple renovation of the faded year was all 

 which God intended to effect by the works he is performing in the 

 earth. But he has other ends to answer, and therefore, if the leaf 

 or plant should loose something of its enriching qualities as it drew 

 near the faded autumn, it may not be spoken of as having failed even 

 in part of the great object which God had in giving life and growth. 



In order to account, in a manner at all satisfactory, for all the 

 phenomena connected with tliis subject, the Committee feel obliged 

 to resort to the opinion that there is in living plants what may be 

 called a self-providing power — a vegetable, or if the term be better 

 liked, a chemical potency ; by which, in their urgency, they can 

 transform materials, not before calculated to give them nourishment 

 or support, into food suitable for them to feed upon ; — that they can 

 gather for themselves manna in a vegetable wilderness and draw their 

 water from the flinty rock. The manner in which plants, under the 



