MODEKN" HIGH FARMING. 37 



FIHST. The undoubted efficacy of artificial manures, when well 

 selected and judiciously applied, 



SECOND. That a badly worked soil, in a lumpy and imperfect state 

 of division, is incapable of affording to the plants that amount 

 of nourishment essential to perfect development. 



Whenever we find it practicable, we recommend deep plowing; 

 and, while filled with a becoming reverence for the memory of our 

 grandfathers, we must deprecate the custom of too closely treading 

 in their footprints. They were fain to rest content with the natural 

 but only partial disintegration ensuing from exposure of the up- 

 turned clods to the atmospheric air ; but we, let us remember, live 

 in an age of progress and of rapid communication ; and in agricul- 

 ture, as in all other things, "the race is to the fittest.'' 



If we would outrun or even keep pace with our competi- 

 tors, we must watch and take lessons from the signs of the times, 

 which teach us that we must increase our production and decrease 

 our cost. In other words, we must make the lands produce their 

 very best and largest crops, and in doing so must not only utilize 

 our capital and our labor, but must freely exercise our brains as 

 well. 



The general practice now prevailing in Europe, of not only 

 well pulverizing the soil after it has been plowed over and allowed 

 to dry, but of repeating the operation at the time of adding to it the 

 manure, and thus blending and mixing the whole, has been produc- 

 tive of the best results. 



By following this course we shall attain a highly conditioned and 

 sensitive soil, denting in due season all the benefits of the rains, 

 frosts, thaws, and solar heat; our manurial agents will be equally 

 disseminated over an equally divided soil ; and we shall thus not 

 only render them doubly efficacious, but shall effect a large economy 

 in the quantity necessary to be used. 



