1850. 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



155 



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 tliis 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 bo 

 formed, 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, Indiana, 

 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 are produced 

 from nothing ? Will it be contended that the earth 

 within the reach of good plowing contains an unlim- 

 ited amount of the precise things consumed to make 

 the plants, whose organic an 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 produced from twenty-five to 

 thirty-five bushels of wheat in the State of New York, 

 now yield only from six to nine bushels per acre ; 

 and in all the old planting States the results of ex- 

 haustion are still more extensive and still more dis- 

 astrous. 



A lack of mental culture and discipline is the most 

 serious impediment to the diffusion of agricultural 

 science among the mass of farmers. Its language is 

 to them an unknown tongue. Hence, the most 

 sublime truths in the economy of nature are shut out 

 from the popular understanding. It is feared that 

 this will ever be 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. 

 So long as we refuse to plant the seed, it is folly to 

 expect a rich harvest of knowledge. 



We over-estimate the value of mere physical 

 strength, like that of the ox or mule, and under-esti- 

 mate the intrinsic worth of cultivated, well-developed 

 Reason, in practical agriculture. No inconsiderable 

 degree of mental culture must precede all scientific 

 tillage and husbandry. An oak is not matured from 

 an acorn in a day, nor in a year ; nor is it possible 

 to form, in a single generation, an universally educa- 

 ted and highly improved race of men. Such improve- 

 ments, to be general, and fixed in a people as a dis- 

 tinguishing feature in their character, must be deeply 

 impressed on several successive generations. 



As a class, farmers have few advantages for being 

 well informed in the rapid progress now making in 

 theeconomical imprnvementof soils, cultivated plants, 

 and domestic animals. This lack of opportunity is a 

 serious misfortune, and leads to this practical result : 

 With 5,000,000 farm laborers — 2,700,000 in the 

 slave-holding, and ■^,300,000 in the free States — 

 American agriculturists so misdirect this immense 

 power of production, that the injury done to 100,000,- 

 000 acres of land is nearly equal to all the apparent 

 nett profits on the whole rural industry of the country. 



To illustrate an important fact, as well as princi- 

 ple, let us suppose that a farmer produces crops worth 

 SI, 000, and that they cost him, including all expen- 

 ses for labor, wear of implements, interest on capital, 

 &c., $850. Nominally, he has a profit of $150 : 

 but it often happens that, if he undertakes to replace 

 in his cultivated fields as much of potash, soda, mag- 

 nesia, phosphorus, soluble silica, and other elements 

 of crops, as both tillage and cropping had removed, 

 it will cost him $175 or S200 to effect that purpose. 

 It is only by consuming the natural fertility of the 

 land that he has realized any profit. 



In a national point of view^, all labor that impover- 

 ishes the soil, is v.'orse than thrown away. No fact 

 in the science of political economy is more important 

 than this. To reduce a field, which in its virgin 

 state produced forty bushels of corn per acre, down 

 to twenty in ten years, and then cultivate it forty 

 years and harvest only twenty bushels per acre in 

 place of forty, is equal to a loss of four hundred 

 bushels of corn per acre in the aggregate, or half the 

 diminished product, without any equivalent whatever. 

 Thus to impoverish land is to wither the muscles of 

 both man and beast employed in its tillage. Human 

 toil is often praised for being highly prodiiciive, when, 

 had the whole truth been known, it would have been 

 seen to be remarkably destructive. Labor never 

 creates a particle of new matter by plowing deep or 

 shallow ; but it frequently places the elements of 

 grain, cotton, and provisions, beyond the reach of all 

 scientific farmers who may live hereafter, and find 

 the soil wanting in thej'aw material for making 

 human food and raiment. 



Is it not the duty of govenunent to diffuse among 

 its citizens a knowledge of the true principles of 

 tillage, and impress upon thein the obligation which 

 every agriculturist owes to posterity, not to leave the 

 soil he cultivates in a less fruitful condition than he 

 found it ? 



It.- — THR RAVAGKS OK INSECTS. 



Such insects as Hessian and wlieat flies, curculios, 

 weevils, army and boll worms, annually destroy crops 

 to the amount of twenty millions of dollars. If a 

 pirate on the high seas, or an Indian savage on land, 

 injures the property of a citizen to the amount of a 

 few dollars, millions are expended, if need be, to pun- 

 ish the offender. This is right. But when public 

 enemies of a different name do a thousand limes more 

 injury to a whole country, ore its citizens under any 

 necessary restraint which forbids their making a 

 common effort to protect their property from insect 

 devastators ? Parasitic plants, such as rust on wheat 

 and many fungi, as well as injurious insects, are on 

 the increase. To attempt to explain the reasons 

 ichy this is so, would lead at once into questions in 

 animal and vegetable physiology, out of place in this 

 brief synopsis of such rural topics as are believed to 

 be of general interest. It may not be amiss to re- 

 mark, however, that many boys are, apparently, 

 educated to kill all small birds that subsist mostly, 

 on insects, so soon as these youngsters are large 

 enough to shoulder a gun. 



Government can do much to check the ravages of 

 insects, by collecting and diffusing useful informa- 

 tion as to their habits, times of transformation, and 

 the best means of destroying or avoiding them. If 

 farmers fold their arms and say that nothing can be 

 done by the science of entomology, nor by any other 

 means, what but an increase of the evil is to be 



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