RULES AND SUGGESTIONS IN FARMING. 199 



IS. Lime and clay are essential in a wheat soil. In- 

 dian com delights in a rich, dry, sandy loam, and makes a 

 good return on light sands, provided it is well fed, that is, 

 well dunged. Turnips excel on dry, sandy soils, though 

 ruta baga requires that they be rich. Barley does best 

 on loams in which there is considerable clay, as do the 

 beet and pea. Oats and potatoes find a congenial home in 

 rich, moist grounds, though for the latter the surface stra- 

 tum should be light and mellow. Of the grasses, the tap- 

 rooted, as the clover, lucerne, &c. require a deep soil, per- 

 meable to their roots, and free from water ; the fibrous- 

 rooted, as the tall oat, orchard-grass, &c. thrive upon 

 soils that are dry and shallow ; and the rough-stalked 

 meadow, bejit, and some of the festuca and agrostis fami- 

 hes, are congenial to, and often natural in, moist or swampy 

 grounds. The timothy, the herds-grass of the Eastern 

 states, our main dependance for winter forage, adapts its 

 habits, it is said, to its location — being fibrous-rooted 

 upon dry, and bulbous-rooted upon moist grounds — and 

 therefore suited to either. 



19. The natural fertility of a farm cannot ordinarily be 

 kept up, or increased, where arable and mixed husbandry 

 prevail, from the resources of the farm and cattle, without 

 a resort to an alternation or change of crops. Although 

 the diminution of fertility may be imperceptible for a time, 

 — and although some soils seem naturally and peculiarly 

 adapted to certain crops, — ^}^et the stock of humus or of 

 specific food is constantly diminishing, and will ultimately 

 fail, if the same crop, or class of crops, is grown upon the 

 same ground in successive years. Whether, according to 

 the theory of De Candolla and Malcaire, the excrementi- 

 tious matter thrown into the soil by the growing crop is 

 poisonous to its species ; or whether, as we maintain, 

 each species requires and exhausts, wholly or partially, a 

 specific food in the soil, suited to its particular wants, — 

 we will not stop now to inquire ; but it is a fact established 

 by general experience, that an annual change of crops 

 upon a field, while under tillage, tends very much to 

 economize its fertility, and to increase the profits of the 

 labor bestowed upon it. Hence, 



