5 44 A GRICUL TURK. 



tilizer with the seed was also the best method of applying 

 it. With those farmers who never sold grain, nor straw, nor 

 hay, whose market products were mainly beef and pork, and 

 who not only fed all the corn and hay they could grow, but also 

 bought corn, and bran, and linseed, and cotton seed, to be fed 

 to their cattle and hogs, the plan adopted was, to feed on a 

 grass-field to be broken in the spring for corn. One or two 

 corn crops were taken, and then the field sown to wheat and 

 reset in grass, which was usually a mixture of clover, timothy, 

 and orchard grass. This wheat received also a heavy dressing 

 of commercial manure, and was thus made to pay the way of 

 the wheat crop, and secure a heavy stand of grass. 



The most distinguished advocate of this system, in the East- 

 ern States, was Colonel Robert Beverley, of Virginia. At one 

 time he reported, with the items, a clear profit of $10,000 

 from a farm of 800 acres. This profit declined, until last year 

 Colonel Beverley refused to incur the loss of stocking it, and 

 merely allowed it to drift, selling the hay crop for the first time 

 in his life, to pay the tax. Colonel Beverley usually applied to 

 his wheat 500 pounds per acre of commercial manure, and both 

 corn crops were fed out on the land, and his yield averaged 

 about 30 bushels per acre, which, before the collapse of prices, 

 produced by the contraction of the currency, and the adoption 

 of the mono-metallic or gold standard, paid 'a good profit on 

 the wheat and cost of fertilizer, so that the heavy stand of 

 grass might be regarded as additional gain. Now then, what 

 has reduced the profits of this system from $10,000 on an 

 8oo-acre farm to the point at which it was found necessary 

 to abandon it, on account of the loss entailed ? Observe, that 

 it was a strictly scientific system which, while yielding large 

 profits, brought the land up to the highest degree of produc- 

 tiveness. What, I ask, has wrought this ominous result ? 



Nothing appears to be left to the farmers of the great grass 

 and grain producing States, whose staples are the bread and 

 meat of nations, but the reflection that no land is, or can be 

 made, rich enough, under existing conditions, to pay the cost of 

 its cultivation, the tax laid upon it, and upon all stock and imple- 

 ments used in its cultivation, to purchase necessary manure, and 

 to provide for the necessities of the farmer and his family, even 



