18-10. 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



251 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TILLAGE. 



Onf of the editor.-: of this journal contributed to 

 the Transactions of the New York State Agricul- 

 tural Society for 1848, an essay on the ^Philosophy 

 of Tillage," which it is believed will be vend with 

 inter. our subscribers who do not 



have access to the Transactions, it' copied into the 



; i he w bole of it, 

 will appear in this and the succeeding number. Its 

 :i is to prompt j oung persons to think — to reason 

 study questions ictical utility. Young 



frien : . nd the mere surface of your profes- 



sion. Dig into it with a resolute purpose to achieve 

 distinction, and master the several sciences that 

 relate to rural affairs. Investigate the nature and 

 of things, and the natural laws that gov- 

 ern them, whether they exist in the form of solid 

 rocks, of invisible gases, loose friable soils, growing 

 plants, walking- animals, or retting manure. It is 

 things rial natural laws with which the farmer has 

 to do. Read carefully, understand these, and your 

 honest toil will be more agreeable, more honorable 

 and more useful to yourself and to the world. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TILLAGE. 



BY DANIEL LKE, M. D. 



The art of transforming soil into bread, is one of 

 the oldest in the world. Old as it is, the operation 

 has hardly begun to excite that deep interest and 

 universal study which all bread-eaters, at some future 

 day, will bestow on a subject of such vital impor- 

 ■. Americans now experience no pressing ne- 

 cessity for improving the art of tillage. Although 

 not urgent, this necessity really exists, and it is grow- 

 ing upon the country much faster than is appreciated. 



After taking a calm survey of our farming opera- 

 tions in the southern, western, middle and northern 

 States, I am constrained to believe that two-thirds 

 of the tillage now in progress throughout the Union, 

 is conducted on a system which, slowly or rapidly, 

 as the case may be, impairs the natural fertility of 

 the soil. In the planting States, the process of ex- 

 haustion is greatly promoted by excessive plowing 

 and hoeing, and an increased degree of solar heat 

 and light, which hastens the decomposition and con- 

 sumption of vegetable mold, and of all the soluble 

 mineral elements of cultivated plants. Improved 

 plows, cultivators, and other implements, have keen 

 placed in the hands of millions of industrious labor- 

 ers, to scratch, skin, and bleed the virgin soil for a 

 few years, which, with the assistance of a bright, 

 burning sun, and washing rains, soon consummates 

 a very satisfactory degree of general desolation. 

 When one plantation ceases to yield 1 * a profit on the 

 labor employed in its culture, it is deserted, and a 

 new one opened by felling the native forest. 



This impoverishing system of agriculture is by 

 no means peculiar to the cotton and tobacco growing 

 States. No State in the Union is exempt from its 

 blighting effects. Everywhere farmers claim, and 

 freely exercise the right to skim the cream off their 

 lands, and pick the bones of their mother Earth, for 

 the sake of the almighty dollar. " Posterity has 

 done nothing for them;" ami their duty to leave the 

 soil in any State, as rich as they found it, to feed 

 and clothe an ever increasing population, is not gen- 

 erally recognized. The twenty -two millions of peo- 

 ple now in the Uuited States, act on the principle 

 that it is wise and just to compel the forty-four mil- 



lions that wi.l be here twenty-five years hence, to 

 give twice as much ! for their bn 



cotton, Sax, and hemp, as their fath •. or to 



ate into the wilderness, as many of their fath- 

 ers did. Nothing is better known to practical far- 

 mers, than the fact, that the poorer land is made by 

 rive and unvi ise cropping, th bor it 



takes to grow one hu ■ ,; wheat, or one 



hundred bales of cotton. Any syt tem of agriculture 

 which impairs the productiveness of a field in the 

 course of twenty-five years, will compel the 

 generation to give more bread: or seek 



new fields over which the plowshare of indusl 

 semi-savage money-hunters, has never pai 

 not plain, that if twenty millions of , now 



rightfully exhaust, to the last possible de 

 third of the farming lands in the States, 

 lions, a quarter of a century hence, may 

 exhaust the other two-third.-. 



Great industry and mechanical skill, in consuming 

 and wasting the elements of bread and meat which 

 a kind Providence has placed on and near the sur- 

 face of the earth, are more praised than they dee 

 We are too much mere physical machines; at once 

 over-working our hands and brutifying our intelli 

 to the positive injury of the human family, and for 

 no real benefit to the inheritors of our property. If 

 we can contrive to leave our children a reasonable 

 surface of good farming land, we need not be at the 

 trouble of converting its soil into current gold for 

 them. Give them a thorough knowledge of the laws 

 of nature, by which one kernel of corn produces a 

 thousand, and the toil required to effect this n 

 will be no more than the laws of health, of bodily 

 strength and comfort, don: and. A reasonable amount 

 of manual labor, a little sweating of the face, will 

 sweeten the bread and sweeten the sleep of any 

 person 



It is difficult to study closely the agriculture of a 

 nation and the philosophy of tillage, and not be deeply 

 impressed with the importance of developing aright 

 the moral and intellectual as well as the physical 

 Man. It is not enough that a few cultivators in 

 every State be well educated, in the largest and best 

 sense of the term. The whole rural industry equally 

 needs the direction of cultivated reason. Without 

 this, there will be a prodigious waste of muscular 

 strength, and a still more disastrous loss of the ele- 

 ments of all crops. That portion of the substance 

 of a soil which enters the roots of cultivated plants, 

 circulates through their capillary tubes, and is finally 

 assimilated into their tissues, stems, leaves and 

 is very liable to be lost, by something like " a slip 

 between the cup and the lip." Without some know- 

 ledge of the science of rural economy, and of the 

 philosophy of tillage, no one can duly appreciate 

 the extent of this loss of fertilizing atoms which in 

 truth never enter into the composition- of the crop. 

 It is the leading object of this essay to explain how 

 this loss of the elements of bread and meat takes 

 place; and to suggest the best process for avoiding it. 



In the first place I desire to impress upon the mind 

 of the reader the fact, that the plow, the harrow, the 

 cultivator, and the hoe, with which the earth is tilled, 

 neither add any matter to, nor take any away from 

 the surface operated on. And yet, without plowing, 

 or tillage of some kind, no one can long grow cereal 

 plants, potatoes, cane, tobacco, or cotton. Tillage, 

 as is apparent, does work indirectly a material 

 change in the soil, although nothing is added directly 



