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CORRESPONDENCE. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



To the Editor of the Cultivator .* 



Sir, — I have a couple of acres of high gravelly 

 land m the midst of a good mowing-field : it bears but 

 little, and is not worth the mowing. If I plant it, I can 

 get a small crop of corn, and a crop of rye with much 

 manuring ; but when I seed it down, the seed usually is 

 summer-killed ; and if it lives one year, it soon runs out, 

 and leaves the land again barren. 1 make much more 

 profit of my manure on other ground, but I hate to see 

 this knoll lie so barren. If it was in my cow-pasture, 

 it would afford some feed, and would not look so bad 

 as now in the midst of a fertile field. One objection to 

 planting it with beans, or any other crop is, I cannot 

 make use of my fall feed on any of the field of twenty 

 acres until quite late, after this crop is off. What shall 

 I do Avith such land ? Yours respectfully, W. D. 



Frajikliiij June 15, 1839. 



Our friend of Franklin is not alone in trouble with 

 such land. Much of the land in that town is gravelly 

 and sandy, and not suitable for mowing ; but we think 

 nothing was made in vain. Such land is easily 

 ploughed ; but if heavily manured it will not hold the 

 maniu'e ; it is not sufficiently tenacious. When such 

 land lies well, and near a mine of peat, or pond-muck, 

 or clay, it may pay the way to cart on forty loads to 

 the 'acre of this more tenacious soil ; but it is not good 

 to expend much on such soils, when they are remote 

 and out of the way, until we have brought our better 

 lands to a higher state of cultivation ; for one load of 

 manure on lower or more clayey lands will produce 

 more in a course of years than three loads will on such 

 land as this. Let our manures, then, be applied where 

 they will do most good, and if we can get any thing 

 from these light soils beyond the expense, they are 



