RULES AND SUGGESTIONS IN HUSBANDRY. 49 



29. The three great formations which we have 

 mentioned possess, it is well known, characteristics 

 different from each other. They grow, naturally, 

 many plants peculiar to each, and they are adapted 

 to different branches of husbandry, or to different 

 farm-crops . The primitive will not generally grow 

 good wheat, but is suited to grass, oats, potatoes, 

 &c. The transition is adapted to natural grasses, 

 and to most of the arable crops, particularly to the 

 cereal class ; and the secondary to the cultivated 

 grasses, to roots, and particularly to wheat.* 



23. There are other circumstances in regard to 

 the location of a farm demanding the consideration 

 of the master, which refer to latitude and elevation. 

 Plants have their natural zone or climate, beyond 

 which they do not grow or thrive but imperfectly. 

 There is a difference in every degree, or sixty miles 

 of latitude upon tide-water, of five or six days in the 

 forwardness of natural vegetation in the spring, and 

 nearly a like difference in the blighting indications 

 of autumn. But what is of equal importance, but 

 less generally regarded, is the difference in climate 

 produced by altitude. Three hundred feet of eleva- 



* An able writer in the Edinburgh Quarterly Journal of 

 Agriculture, in reference to these formations, terms the primi- 

 tive, which, it seems, comprises the most elevated lands in Scot- 

 land, the region of heath and coarse herbage; the transition, 

 the natural region of the grasses; and the secondary, the region 

 of cultivated grasses, and particularly adapted to arable and al- 

 ternate husbandry. He assigns to each a particular and dis- 

 tinct breed of cattle. To the first, or higher region, a thick- 

 haired, small, hardy breed; to the second, or middle region, those 

 of larger size ; and to the third, or lower region, those that are 

 most sensitive to cold, gross feeders, and that acquire the great- 

 est weight He goes on to show, from numerous examples, that 

 these several breeds are the most profitable in the various dis- 

 tricts assigned them ; and that they are manifestly improved, in 

 most cases, by a judicious cross with the improved short-horns. 

 There is much good sense in the writer's remarks ; and, al- 

 though the descriptions of the three formations as to elevation 

 does not fully apply in the United States, the facts we have 

 copied afford useful suggestions to the American grazier. 

 I. E 



