Thus it would appear that instead of plants which contain the largest amount of 

 nitrogen requiring the largest quantities of ammonia or nitrogen in the manure, it is 

 more probable that plants require ammonia in proportion to the amount of silica they 

 contain; so that nearly all the grasses — wheat, corn, oats, barley, &c. — would require 

 much more nitrogen for their perfect development than the leguminosa^ — clover, beans, 

 peas, &c., — which, compared with the cereals, contain but little silica. And this con- 

 clusion is sustained not only by direct experiment, but by the successful practice of the 

 best farmers in this country and Europe — clover, peas, beans, &c., being considered the 

 best possible preparative for the wheat crop — better, in many cases, than the summer 

 fallow ; while the succession of cereals always, unless the soil is kept up by manure, 

 produces exhaustion. 



ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PLOWING-. 



In the cultivation of the soil, the first and most important operation is its thorough 

 pulverization, loosening the soil to enable the roots of plants to penetrate and perform 

 their functions, and admitting the atmospheric air, the presence of which is not only 

 beneficial in disintegrating the minerals of the soil, but absolutely necessary to render 

 all the food of plants fit for assimilation. The spade is perhaps the best and simplest 

 implement to accomplish this object, but in extensive farming operations the slowness 

 and expense of the process are sufficient to warrant the opinion that it will never, as has 

 been thought by some, be generally adopted. 



The plow is necessarily a much more complex implement, inasmuch as the labor of the 

 horse is substituted for that of man. When we look at the rude and simple wooden plows 

 with only one handle to guide them, which were used very generally a century ago, and 

 which are in fact now used in the Hebrides and other countries in the old world, and 

 compare them with one of our American plows, so neatly made and beautifully finished 

 that it would be an ornament to a gentleman's drawing-room, we have room for a little 

 cratulation, and are apt to imagine that now we have arrived at perfection in the art of 

 plowing. Yet even now much difference of opinion exists as to what good plowing 

 really is — some liking wide, flat furrows, and others narrow, lapped ones ; and it is this 

 disagreement of opinion that constitutes the difierence of plowing in Great Britain and 

 America. 



The best Scotch and English farmers consider that the depth and width of furrow 

 should bear a constant proportion — that the furrow should be rectilinear — and that, 

 when raised, the exposed surfaces should be of equal breadth on either side the furrow. 

 Any departure from this rule is considered a positive fault ; and in deciding on the 

 merits of different plowing, this is made one of the standard criteria. The most 

 approved plowing in Scotland is a furrow seven inches deep by ten. Avide, with a lap 

 of three inches, thus leaving seven inches on each side of the furrow. A furrow of this 

 proportion is considered to be easier turned than any other, while more soil is exposed 

 to the meliorating influence of the atmosphere ; and when dragged down, the weeds 

 and o-rass, or clover, &c., are better covered and rotted, while a much deeper and better 

 bed of loose soil is prepared for the seed. 



Theoretically, this is doubtless the best mode of plowing, and the nearer we a])proxi- 

 mate to it in practice, the better. American farmers, however, are not -content to 

 walk from one end of a field to the other, and only turn over nine or ten inches of sod ; 

 fourteen to twenty inches suit their go-a-head views much better. And so it is that 

 we usually plow furrows which in Scotland or England a farmer would not allow us to 

 turn if we would plow the land for nothing; — at least, so we have often been told by 

 good English and Scotch plowmen. There is a reason f©r this : the comparatively 



