24 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



it may seem a waste of time to dwell upon it. Here is the 

 trouble — they admit the doctrine in full, but do not admit the 

 ploughshare half-way. 



Just twenty-four years ago, a Boston house imported from 

 England the first subsoil plough ever in this country. Yankee 

 skill soon changed the heavy, costly thing into a series of 

 ploughs calculated for all work and for all teams, from one 

 horse to four horses or oxen. These subsoil ploughs, following 

 the common plough in the same furrow, go down into the third 

 story of the farm, not turning up the subsoil but shaking and 

 pulverizing it, so that all three stories of tlie farm are opened 

 to the warmth of the sun, the softening of the rain, and the 

 purification of the air, with the myriads of plant-roots following 

 in their wake. Of course, if the subsoil is sand and gravel, or 

 mostly rock, the work may be overdone, but in every other case 

 the deeper the cultivation, with manure in proportion, the 

 better the farming, and curiously enough, the freer the land 

 from wet in moist seasons, and the freer it is from drought in 

 dry ones. 



Now, my hearers may say — " We knew all this beforcj better 

 than you!" Exactly so! But if you A;woi^ it, why don't you c?o 

 it? Why are subsoil ploughs so nearly unknown in so many of 

 the towns in our society's limits, and the soil tilled by merely 

 scratching the surface — or by what may be called skim-milk 

 farming? Why is no premium offered by our society for sub- 

 soil ploughing, or some recognition made at our exhibitions 

 that it is even desirable to stir the soil beyond the regulation 

 depth of the ploughing match? For many generations the air 

 and sun have been trying to ameliorate the subsoils of North 

 Middlesex, and the corn and grass-roots, more enterprising than 

 their owners, have vainly sought to pierce its clays and hard- 

 pans in search of plant-food for their benefit and ours, but you 

 would not aid them with the steel fingers that alone can do the 

 work. 



You will often see, both in city and country, a mansion of 

 which the best part is made into a parlor, furnished more 

 expensively than all the house beside, but kept continually shut 

 with close blinds and curtains, and a strong smell of mildew 

 pervading the dark and solemn silence. Let the clergyman 



