They think that because good Peruvian guano is a splendid manure for wheat, and 

 superphosphate of h'me a first rate manure for turnips, it must always pay to use them. 

 It is not so. Corn is perhaps the best food in the world to fatten hogs ; yet with corn 

 at 50 cents per bushel, and pork at $3 per hundred, pork-making is not prohtable. So 

 with wheat at a dollar and corn at 50 cents per bushel, an application of guano or 

 superphosphate at 2-|- cents per lb. we believe will be found a poor investment. On the 

 other hand, if beef is worth 18 cents per lb., as has been the Cfise in Philadelphia for 

 some time past, nothing could pay better than to raise large crops of ruta baga or 

 mangel wurzel with superpliosphate of lime and guano, and foed them to fattening 

 cattle on the farm. Most of our esculents which, from the large amount of water they 

 contain, can not be sent from the distant fertile soil to the large Atlantic cities, can be 

 raised with a pi-otit by the use of artificial fertilizers. An intelligent agriculturist will 

 be able to decide, in most cases, to what crops he can afibrd to return to the soil those 

 indispensable elements which a miserable system of tillage may have removed. It may 

 not pay to supply the required ammonia and phosphates to an impoverished soil by 

 guano (of which a good sample should contain 18 per'cent. ammonia and 25 per cent. 

 phosphates) as a direct manure for wheat, neither would it pay to use superphosphate 

 of lime at 24- cents per lb. for such a purpose ; yet if superphosphate could be pur- 

 chased at a reasonable price, or the farmer could make it himself from bone-dust, he 

 could supply his soil with the lacking phosphates, and, by applying them to turnips or 

 clover, get good crops, which would supply the soil with ammonia derived from the 

 atmosphere. — J. H. 



UNDERDRAINING. 



NUMBER ONE. 



Were we asked to name any single operation that would most improve American agri- 

 culture, we should unhesitatingly answer, thorough underdraining. " That," says one, 

 "is a strange idea; my farm, and most of the farms I am acquainted with, suffer more 

 or less from drouth every year, and I should prefer more rather than less water on my 

 farm, especially on the grass land." That, my good sir, is precisely what underdraining 

 will do for you. It will remove all excess of water in the fall, winter, and early spring, 

 when the plants need but little; and in the summer time, when plants need large 

 quantities of water, and the undrained soil is very dry, it will make the soil quite moist 

 and supply the plants with sufficient water. " That," you say, " is contradictor^/ ; and 

 however plausible it may be in theory, I guess it will not work in practice." In that 

 you are wrong. In this, as in most true agricultural theories, the theory has been 

 induced from practice. Every farmer who has tried underdraining, knows, whether he 

 can understand the cause or not, that his drained land is much drier in a wet time, and ' 

 more humid in a dry time, than his undrained land, and that it will stand a drouth 

 very much better ; in fact, that drouths seldom affect his well drained land. Let us 

 examine this a little. 



If you take a common sponge, and dip one end into a basin of water, the whole 

 sponge will become thoroughly saturated, the water rising very far above its own level. 

 If you take a narrow glass tube, open at both ends, and plunge one end into water, you 

 will observe the water rise, contrary to the law of gravitation, much higher in the tube 

 than the external surface of the water. Dr. Hook, when experimenting on this subject, 

 made glass tubes so fine that the water rose in them twenty-one inches above the level 

 of the water in the vessel. The law by which it rises is called capillary attraction, and 

 is explained thus : the particles of water have a stronger affinity for the glass than for 



^bT-, rjd 



