78 O N THE ROTATION OF CROPS. 



beet, ruta-baga, turnips wheat buckwheat beans oats and 

 trefoil trefoil wheat.* 



In this rotation of crops we find that after the soil has been 

 manured, the crops that are most exhausting are replaced by 

 those that are less so; and those that foul the soil, by those that 

 cleanse it by requiring frequent weedings. It is by similar 

 means that nearly the whole sea coast of Belgium, consisting 

 of sterile sand, has been rendered as fertile as the best soil; and 

 the richest harvests have followed from a judicious system of 

 cropping. 



This is the foreign system of rotation, recommended partly 

 by that great man, Sir ARTHUR YOUNG, more recently by 

 CHAPTAL and other eminent agriculturists. By it the indus- 

 trious inhabitants of many parts of Great Britain and the con- 

 tinent of Europe, have vanquished all obstacles, and fertilized 

 a soil to the highest degree which was heretofore sterile, and 

 nearly unproductive. 



The American system is conducted on very nearly the same 

 general principles; all that is necessary to say therefore on this 

 point, is embraced in the following paragraphs, which we ex- 

 tract from an interesting paper in the Farmers' Cabinet, page 

 296, vol. ii. 



"System is as important in farming as any other business; 

 without it, confusion, disorder and loss will be the inevitable 

 result. Fifty years ago there was no regular, rational syste- 

 matic rotation of farming pursued in what are now the best 

 cultivated districts of Pennsylvania. The consequence was a 

 regular and constant deterioration of the soil, producing less 

 and less annually, till starvation and want seemed to be inevi- 

 table, in many sections of country, that are now in a very high 

 state of cultivation. The introduction of red clover, and plas- 

 ter of paris, with a judicious rotation of crops, gave rise to the 

 astonishing improvements which have taken place within forty 

 or fifty years. The soil gradually became enriched and regene- 

 rated under the improved system, and its increased products 

 enabled its owners still further to add to its fertility; and how 

 far this plan of progressive improvement is capable of being 

 carried, has never yet, that I have ascertained, been deter- 

 mined; but many of us have lived to see farms, that yielded but 

 a very scanty support to a single family, under the old way of 

 cultivation, now not only support in affluence, three, four, or 

 five families, but furnish the means of enriching them all, by 

 the adoption of the modern improvements in agriculture. 



"The following rotation is generally adopted by the leading 



* The other references are so similar that we omit them. 



