182 GORRESPONDENGE; 



eORRESFONDENCE. 



To the Editor of the Cultivator r 



Dear Sir, — I have lately seen in some of the 

 agricuhural papers some extravagant calculations as to 

 the profits of. lands planted with roots, compared \vith 

 lands in grass. I like root crops, and think every 

 farmer ought to raise a good supply of them ; but when 

 I see stories, told in print, that no man of reflection 

 will believe, I feel hurt that the cause of farming must 

 thereby sufter through its professed friends ; and I wish 

 that such statements may be kept apart from others of 

 a better character, and labeled " Book-farming," in 

 which I, for one, have not much confidence. 



I feel confident, from some little experience in the 

 business for thirty years past, that grass-lands, in the 

 neighborhood or within twenty miles of Boston, have 

 also some value,- and that few crops give us a better net 

 income. I have one acre of land in this town which 

 never fails to give me one ton of good merchantable 

 hay annually, and this without manuring, and without 

 any labor save that of getting the hay. As it lies near 

 my barn, the cost of getting this hay does not often 

 exceed two dollars; though, to take my farm together, 

 the cost averages three dollars per ton. Hay, for the 

 last twenty years, has been worth fifteen dollars the 

 ton on the average in winter and spring. Now what 

 is this land worth per acre ? It must be worth more 

 than two hundred dollars, for it gives me the interest 

 of two hundred dollars, besides the labor of getting; 

 and then we have the fall feed. 



Now to say that land in turnips, or in any other 

 roots, will give three times the net profit of land in 

 grass is rather extravagant : six hundred dollars is a 

 great sum for an acre of tillage-land,, and thirty-six 

 dollars annual net income from such land is more than 

 most men will expect ; but we are told an acre in tur- 



