196 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



reached by a subsoil plough. These selections of 

 soils for analysis should never be made soon after a 

 manuring, as the soluble portions -will pervade the 

 soil in more than dependable quantities, and thus 

 lead to errors. 



"SVc often receive copies of analyses, Avith a request 

 to advise modes of culture, manuring, Sec, Sec, and 

 too often are compelled to visit the locality, simply 

 because the applicant has not been sufficiently ex- 

 plicit in his communications. We should receive, 

 accompanying the analysis, a description of the farm 

 generally — such as the fertilizing materials upon it, 

 marl, muck. Sec, Sec, and when known, the class of 

 rocks pervading or underlaying the subsoil ; also, 

 some account of the -qjrevious mode of manuring, 

 depth to -which it has been ploughed, elevation 

 above the sea, and indeed all fiicts which may in the 

 most remote degree affect the economy or require- 

 ments of the farm. — Working Farmer. 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



Dr. Lee, superintendent of the agricultural de- 

 partment of the Patent Office, iir his report to the 

 commissioner making suggestions in reference to the 

 ways and means now available for improvements of 

 American agriculture, offers the following remarks 

 on agricultural education : — 



Since 1823, when Judge Buel introduced the first 

 bill to establish an agricultural college in the state 

 of Now York, by legislative aid, constant efforts have 

 been made to render the study of rural economy as 

 a science, not less than its practice as an art, popular 

 in this country. Twenty-seven yeai-s have now 

 elapsed, a whole generation has passed off the stage, 

 and New York, with her five hundred thousand cul- 

 tivators of the soil, is still without the first agi-icul- 

 tural school worthy of the name; nor is any other 

 state in a better condition. Dark as this view of 

 agricultui-al education reaUy is, it is the darkness 

 that precedes the dawn of a bright and happy day. 

 Men who have labored for the improvement of agri- 

 culture, and the elevation of agriculturists, for a 

 quarter of a centurj% with little of hope, and less of 

 pecuniary reward, now realize the beginning of an 

 auspicious change in public sentiment. Thanks to 

 agricultural journals and societies, the people w'ill 

 soon discover that labor and capital devoted to tillage 

 and husbandry arc as worthy of legislative consid- 

 eration, as labor and capital employed in mining, 

 commerce, and manufactures. So soon as this truth 

 shall be fairly comprehended, the long struggle of 

 the friends of improvement will be crowned with 

 success; and the victory won over both ignorance and 

 its traditions. 



It is, indeed, wonderful how long those enlight- 

 ened, reasoning farmers, who, like Washington, 

 cherish a due respect for their high calling, have 

 had to beg, and beg in vain, of state legislatures, 

 and of Congress, for a little assistance to prevent 

 the universal impoverishment of American soils. 

 Whatever has been done to arrest the exhaustion of 

 arated lands, lias been effected not only without due 

 aid from government, but in spite of a mistaken 

 policy, which encouraged the removal of all the 

 elements of bread and meat from cultivated fields, 

 and their speedy transportation beyond the possibil- 

 ity of restitution. Neither the earnest recommen- 

 dation of the illustrious farmer of Mount Vernon, 

 nor the prayers of two generations of agriculturists, 

 nor the painful fact that nearly all tilled lands were 

 becoming loss and less productive, could induce any 

 legislature to foster the study of agriculture as a 

 science. Happily, this term, when used in connec- 



tion with rural affairs, is no longer the subject of 

 ridicule. 



Some pains have been taken in this report to prove 

 that one thousand millions of dollars judiciously ex- 

 ponded, will hardly restore the one hundred millions 

 of acres of partially exhausted lands in the Union, 

 to that richness of mould, and strength of fertility 

 for permanent cropping, which they possessed in 

 their primitive state. ' 



The continued fruitfulness of the earth is an in- 

 terest far greater, and more enduring, than any form 

 of government. 



If the twenty-two millions of people now in the 

 United States may rightfully exhaust the natural 

 fertility of one third of tlic arable lands of the coun- 

 try, the forty-four millions who will be here twenty- 

 five years hence may properly consume the produc- 

 tiveness of the remaining two thirds of all American 

 territory. 



A great principle is involved in the science of agri- 

 culture, which reaches through indefinite genera- 

 tions, and forms the basis of all possible improve- 

 ments, and of the highest hopes of our race. All 

 advancement is impracticable in a country that closely 

 approximates the condition of a desert. 



As a nation of farmers, is it not time that we in- 

 quire by what means, and on what terms, the fruit- 

 fulness of the earth, and the health and vigor of its 

 invaluable products, may be forever maintained, if 

 not forever improved ? 



Those are questions of universal concernment, to 

 the careful and rigid investigation of which no man 

 should refuse to lend a listening ear. A govern- 

 mental policy which results in impoverishing the 

 natural fertility of land, no matter by what popular 

 name it is called, must have an end. It is only a 

 question of time, when this truly spendthrift course, 

 this abuse of the goodness of Providence, shall meet 

 its inevitable punishment. To show the necessity 

 of reform, a plain estimate has been made, in the 

 chapter on " agricultural statistics," to prove that we 

 annually waste enough of the elements of bread, 

 without which, not the first kernel of corn can- be 

 foi-mcd, to produce one thousand million bushels of 

 this important staple. 



The Board of Agriculture of Ohio estimates the 

 crop of corn in 1849, within the limits of that state, 

 at seventy million bushels ; and it will hardly be 

 extravagant to say, that the farmers of Ohio, In- 

 diana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin export a 

 million tons of breadstuffs and provisions, where 

 they import one ton of the atoms drawn from their 

 virgin soils, to form agricultural products. Can it be 

 said, in truth, that a million tons of bread and meat 

 arc produced from '>iothingf Will it be contended 

 that the earth, within the reach of good ploughing, 

 contains an unlimited amount of the precise things 

 consumed to make the plants, whose organic and 

 inorganic elements are taken from the soil, and never 

 restored ? If this be true, then all fertilizers are not 

 only unnecessary, but absolutely worthless. This 

 cannot be so ; for lands that seventy years ago pro- 

 duced from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels of 

 wheat in the state of New Y'ork, now yield only 

 from six to nine bushels per acre ; and in all the old 

 planting states, the results of exhaustion are still 

 more extensive, and still more disastrous. 



A lack of mental culture and discipline is the most 

 serious impediment to the dift'usion of agricultural 

 science among the mass of farmers. Its language is 

 to them an unknown tongue. Hence tlie most sub- 

 lime truths in the economy of natm-e are shut out 

 from the popular understanding. It is feared that 

 this will ever bo the case until schools designed to 

 teach those branches of learning which the practical 

 farmer greatly needs, but does not possess, are estab- 

 lished and maintained throughout the United States. 



