MAXIMS FOE FARMERS. 21 



It is not too soon to begin to plant forests in the more naked and 

 arid portions of Texas ; it is high time that you were regarding good 

 timber as property, and saving it with scrupulons care and foresight. 

 Extensive sections of your State will need it before they can grow 

 it, aside from those localities which need it already; and your 

 Society can do her no better service than to impress on all own- 

 ers of the soil, whether in village or rural district, the duty and 

 profit of an annual and persistent ])lanting of choice and serviceable 

 Trees. 



But— not to trespass too far on your patience — let me close with 

 a few maxims, applicable to cultivation in every clime and under all 

 circumstances, whether among populations dense as that of China 

 or sparse as that of British America. 



I. Only GOOD Farming pays. He who sows or plants without 

 reasonable assurance of good crops annually, might better earn 

 wages of some capable neighbor than work for so poor a paymaster 

 as he is certain 'to prove himself. 



IT. The good farmer is proved such hy the steady ajjpreciation 

 of' his crops. Any one may reap an ample harvest from a fertile 

 virgin soil ; the good fai-mer alone grows good crops at first, and 

 better and better ever afterward, 



III. Tt is far easier to mxaintain the, productive capacity of a 

 farm than to restore it. To exhaust its fecundity, and then attempt 

 its restoration by buying costly commercial fertilizers, is wasteful 

 and irrational. 



IV. The good farmer selh mainly such j^^odticts as are least ex- 

 haustive. Necessity may constrain him, for the first year or two, to 

 sell Grain, or even Hay ; but he will soon send ofi" his surplus mainly 

 in the form of Cotton, or Wool, or Meat, or Butter and Cheese, or 

 something else that retiirns to the soil nearly all that is taken from 

 it. A bank account daily drawn upon, while nothing is deposited 

 to its credit, must soon respond " No funds :" so with a farm simi- 

 larly treated. 



V. notation is at least negative Fertilization. It may not posi- 

 tively enrich a farm ; it will at least retard and postpone its impov- 

 erishment. He who grows Wheat after Wheat, Corn after Corn, 

 for twenty years, will need to emigrate before that term is fulfilled. 

 The same farm cannot support (nor endure) him longer than that. 

 All our great Wheat-growing sections of fifty jears ago are Wheat- 

 growing no longer ; while England grows larger crops thereof on 



