No. 2. 



Profitable Farming. — Rotation of Crops. 



45 



dition to this, by the ordinary method of 

 ploughing, his field, at each successive rota- 

 tion, is deteriorating, his crops becoming less, 

 and in a few years he finds he must abandon 

 his exhausted and worn-out fields to seek a 

 subsistence for himself and family in some 

 other business, or in some other region, where 

 the hand of man has been less wasteful of the 

 bounties of nature. 



Instead, then, of his scanty manuring of 

 ten cart-loads to the acre, which will give 

 him but thirty bushels of corn, let him apply 

 thirty loads. This additional twenty loads, at 

 the usual price of manure in this part of the 

 country, will cost him thirty dollars. But he 

 now, instead of thirty bushels of corn, gels 

 sixty bushels, and the increased quantity of 

 stover will more than pay for the excess of 

 labour required in cultivating and harvesting 

 the large crop over that of the small one. 

 He has then added thirty bushels of corn to 

 his crop by means of the twenty loads of ma- 

 nure, which at the usual price of one dollar 

 per bushel, pays him in the first crop for his 

 extra outlay. His acre of land is laid to grass 

 after taking off the corn, and the effect of his 

 twenty loads of additional manuring, will be 

 to give him, at the lowest estimate, three ad- 

 ditional tons of hay in the first three years of 

 mowing it, worth fifteen dollars a ton, stand- 

 ing in the field. Now look at the result. 

 His thirty dollars expended for extra n^anur- 

 ing was paid for in the first year's crop, and 

 at the end of three years more, he will have 

 received forty-five dollars profit on his outlay 

 of thirty dollars, and in addition to this, his 

 land is improved, and in much better condi- 

 tion for a second rotation. There is no de- 

 lusion in this. It is a practical result, of the 

 reality of which any farmer may satisfy him- 

 self, who will take the trouble to make the 

 experiment. 



From no item of outlays can the farmer 

 derive so ample, or so certain a profit, as from 

 his expenditures for manure to a certain ex- 

 tent. This has been most strikingly verified 

 by some of our West Cambridge farmers. It 

 is not uncommon among some of the farmers 

 in that town, to put on their grounds one 

 hundred dollars' worth of manure to the acre; 

 and in more instances than one, the gross 

 sales of produce from ten acres under the 

 plough have amounted to five lliousand dol- 

 lars in one season. This is the result of high 

 manuring and the judicious cultivation of a 

 soil, too, which is exceedingly poor and sandy. 

 — E. Phinney. 



If you would be remembered by posterity 

 with gratitude, transplant each year a few 

 trees to the spot on which you live, and at- 

 tend carefully to their cultivation. 



For the Farmers' Caljinet. 

 Rotation of Crops. 



The importance of a rotation of crops is 

 indeed a subject of vast moment. De Con- 

 dolle, the celebrated botanist, has discovered 

 and verified by satisfactory experiment, that 

 of the nutriment which all plants receive and 

 digest, they exude an inconsumable or innu- 

 tritive portion by their roots, and that this ex- 

 crementitious matter unfits or poisons the soil 

 for a second crop of the same kind, until it 

 is either consumed or neutralized by cultiva- 

 tion ; this very matter, however, proving nu- 

 tritious to other and different kinds of plants. 

 And from thence he argues that one crop of 

 grain should not be succeeded by another of 

 the same description — wheat after wheat, 

 oats after oats, &c. ; nor, reasoning from an- 

 alogy, ought wheat to follow oats, as they are 

 too nearly allied in their natures, and are 

 supposed to feed on the same pabulum, both 

 also coveting the same description of soil — 

 that which is cool and rather heavy. The 

 fact above-stated fully accounts for the failure 

 of the clover crop, if sown oflen on the same 

 land. The fibrous-rooted plants always suc- 

 ceed best after those that are tap-rooted ; 

 hence arises the incalculably profitable sys- 

 tem of the turnip husbandry in England, by 

 which they are enabled to raise crops of grain 

 of the finest quality and in almost double 

 quantity ; at the same time carrying forward 

 the improvement of the soil to an almost in- 

 definite extent, to which might be added, the 

 means of supporting double the quantity of 

 stock of all kmds, by introducing the different 

 varieties of the roots, green crops for soiling 

 forming a link in a system by which the 

 farmer is enabled to pay in rent, tithe, and 

 taxes, a sum which in almost every other 

 country would be found absolutely insupport- 

 able. 



It is a change of crops that we want — and 

 by it, I sincerely believe that we should be 

 relieved from one half the evils which now 

 assail us in the shape of blight, smut, rust, 

 mildew, root-rot, studs, and a dozen others, 

 whose very names would then be forgotten — 

 & healthy crop being oftentimes proof against 

 this host of pestilences ; and such a crop 

 generally springs from a well-cultivated, un- 

 exhausted soil, not, however, made rich by 

 the immediate application of large quantities 

 of rank manure; for, valuable as these may 

 be in forcing on green crops to be mown for 

 hay or fodder, I am convinced they are of 

 great injury to the production of all kinds of 

 grain. J. Saunders. 



York County. 



Labour and capital judiciously applied to 

 the improvement of agriculture, are a no less 

 sure investment than in any other business. 



