HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY. 267 



would afford a better pasture for our coru roots than six — 

 enough better to pay the extra expense, and leave an increased 

 profit — how should we effect the change ? Not by running 

 deeper with our present ploughs. They are inadequate to the 

 task. Not by constructing them very much larger. No power 

 yet in the field could draw them. Even could we perform the 

 operation, it would bury the vegetable mould in too cold a 

 region, where its decomposition and conversion to food for new 

 plants would be retarded. If performed in the spring, it would 

 leave the surface entirely too cold for the first summer's crop. 

 Trench ploughing, of which so much has been said of late, 

 we suppose is well enough for a rich fancy farmer, who, for 

 the sake of exhibiting his agricultural skill, can very well 

 afford to put more on a few acres than he will take off. It 

 may be well for gardeners in the neighborhood of a large city, 

 where rents are high, manure plenty, and vegetables always in 

 demand ; but the practice of it by farmers generally, we ap- 

 prehend, must be delayed till our country contains at least a 

 hundred millions of people. Subsoiling, ii. connection with 

 common ploughing, as we understand it, proposes first to invert 

 the top soil some five or six inches, and then to stir the subsoil 

 some ten or twelve inches deeper. For many of our fields 

 this must be a capital operation. We see not how their pro- 

 ductiveness could fail to be increased by it. It opens passages 

 for the circulation of air and water. It can hardly fail to pro- 

 duce a favorable influence on the temperature of the soil. 

 But it does not come up to our idea of so pulverizing the soil, 

 that every portion of it may be perforated by rootlets, and be- 

 come a fit medium for the transmission of water downwards 

 or upwards, as the case may require. We should keep in 

 mind, that, in a well prepared soil, the tendency of water is 

 upward after evaporation, as well as downward after rain. 



We have all heard it said, that " it is wise to learn from an 

 enemy." It is wise, also, to learn from an inferior. Presently 

 you will understand what is intended by this last remark. 

 The Spanish farmer, in point of skill, intelligence and indus- 

 try, cannot be superior to the American farmer. He is indeed 

 more conservative — he uses the same plough to-day that his 



