1850. 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



227 



seem to believe. From MAcquEEN's work, it. ap- 

 pears that a given amount of farm labor in England 

 yields twice as much gold as in this country. If o\ir 

 readers wish to know why this is so, it will be ex- 

 jilniiied hereafter. 



THODGHTS ON THE PRESENT SYSTEM 

 OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



With 3 few sngg^slions as to the means which will probably 

 b3 necessary to improve it. 



Being an Eiifrlish farmer, recently arrived in this 

 country, and now engaged in cultivating a portion 

 of its partially exhausted soil, I feel disappointed that 

 you did not, in your late excellent article on " The 

 present position of American Agriculture," state 

 what you consider would bo the best means to be 

 adopted to n'pair the grievous injuries already done 

 to the land ; niKi also, that you gave us no advice as 

 to the future management of our farms, in order to 

 prevent the impoverishment of the soil by the removal 

 of crops, which are necessarily sold off it. 



I am aware that to correct the present errors, and 

 fix agriculture on a rational and scientific foundation, 

 will be the work of years ; requiring a perfect knowl- 

 edge of the constitution of the soil and the elements 

 removed from it by the growth of cultivated plants, 

 enabling us to fix a judicious rotation of crops, so 

 that the substances not required by one class of 

 plants may be converted into food by those of an 

 opposite character. Till this is known — and it will 

 require many years of laborious chemical investiga- 

 tion and expensive systematic field experiments — 

 we must go blindly on till legislation sees fit to use 

 proper methods to attain so great a desideratum. 



hi the mean time it may not be utterly useless to 

 endeavor to ascertain what knowledge we do at pres- 

 ent possess, of the requirements of cultivated plants. 

 The most valuable and important of these is the 

 cereal uheat — systematic and accurate experiments 

 on which, in the field and the laboratery, have been 

 carried on by Mr. Lawes, on his estate at Rotham- 

 sted. Herts, England, which demonstrably proves 

 that on ordinary soils the chief substance which need 

 be supplied to grow large crops of wheat, :? ammonia, 

 (a combination of nitrogen \v\th hydrogen.) It is a 

 volatile alkali, which, when neutralized and fixed by 

 sulphuric acid, is used to a large extent by the farm- 

 ers of England, at a cost of $60 per ton, 2 cw t. being 

 sown to the acre ; and it was found that when nitro- 

 gen was employed in this form, or as muriate or car- 

 bonate of ammonia, it requires about fwe times as 

 much to grow u'heat as is cuntnined in the grain tchen 

 grown. Hence, wheat may be called a nitrogen 

 consuming or destroifing plant. Barley, oats, Indian 

 corn, timothy, kc, belonging to the same botanical 

 genus, may be considered, in the absence of direct 

 experiment, as nitrogen consumers also. Thus it 

 will be seen, that nearly all the plants grown by the 

 American farmer, tend to exhaust the soil of nitrogen. 



Now, if nitrogen, in some form or other, be not 

 present, the soil is not exhausted of the mineral ele- 

 ments ; for, in such a case, the wheat will not thrive: 

 but it always gets suiEcient to produce a few bushels 

 of wheat to the acre, from the atmosphere ; for all 

 animal and vegetable substances, during decomposi- 

 tion, give off carbonate of ammonia, which is brought 

 down to the earth by every shower of rain, and ab- 

 sorbed by the roots of plants. The beneficial effects 

 of " plaster," (sulphate of lime,) according to Liebig 



is owing to its property of fixing the ammonia thus 

 brought to the land, till it is required by the plant. 

 Be this as it may, it is certain that a sufiicient quan- 

 tity can not be obtained from the atmosphere, to meet 

 this immense destruction of nitrogen by the almost 

 uninterrupted growth of cereals ; and thus it is, that 

 the crops are so small when nil the organized nitro- 

 gen originally in the soil is removed. Is there not 

 something defective in such a course of tillage ''. 

 Ought we not to lessen this destruction, by growing 

 plants which contain more nitrogen than they have 

 derived from the soil, obtaining it in some form from 

 the atmosphere 1 Turnips, clover, and green vetches 

 are good crops for this purpose, and on what is railed 

 in England the " Norfolk," or ■' four course system" 

 — one-fourth of the arable land is in wheat, one- 

 fourth turneps, one-fourth barley, and one-fourth clo- 

 ver, following each other in the order I have named 

 them. In this manner, if a good system of I'attening 

 stock is adopted, the land is kept in good condition 

 and large crops are obtained. 



The climale of this country is probably too hot lo 

 grow turneps on a large scale ; but it is very favor- 

 able for the growth of clover, and for its conversion 

 into hay for the use of cattle in winter. Thus, in- 

 stead of growing the cereal timothy, large crops of 

 clover should be grown, and thereby a considerable 

 amount of nitrogen would be collected from the at- 

 mosphere. But I would by no means plow under the 

 crop, as by so doing a large amount of valuable food 

 is destroyed, which does not in the least benefit the 

 succeeding wheat crop, but rather injures it by caus- 

 ing an unnatural development of straw. Whereas, 

 if the clover was made into hay, and used along with 

 oil-cake to fatten sheep or cattle in the w inter, using 

 plenty of straw for litter, a very large quantity of 

 V'lluable 7naniire would be the result : for the com- 

 position of the manure depends on the food, and the 

 more nitrogen the fotpd contains, the more valuable 

 will be the manure produced by its consumption. 



The composition of the following substances will 

 give a correct representation of their value as food 

 for cattle : 



TARi.t showing the amount of dry mttttei-, nitrogen, mineral mat- 

 ter, phosphoric acid, and potash anJ soda, in 100 parts of such 

 substance, from analyses made al Hcthomsted, Knglaud.— 

 That of Indian corn I obtained by calculation from the proxi- 

 mate analyses of Mr. J. H. Salisbury. 



Ueseription of food. 



Oil-Cake;. . . 

 Linseed,.. . . 

 Beans, Peas, c 

 Wheat. . . ; . 



Oats, 



Barley 



Malt.. 



Malt Dust. . . 

 Indian Com, 



It will be seen that oil-cake contains more of the_ 

 essentially important elements of nutrition and ma- 

 nure than any other I'ood generally used for cattle. 

 Mr. Lawes' experiments on sheep and cattle fully 

 confirm the chemical evidence of its value as food. 

 It being granted, then, that oil-cake is the best fooil 

 for feeding purposes, the important question is, will 

 it pay to convert it into flesh, fat, wool, and manure '? 

 clover being valued at $5, oil-cake §18, and flesh 

 $100 per ton. 



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