FARMS. 123 



mcnt. The crop of apples even this season, xinpropitious as it 

 has been, was very fair. 



The collection and use of manure is an important item in Mr, 

 Ware's system of farming. His large and thrifty fields of 

 onions, his crops of corn and rye and roots, his abundant yield 

 of grass, all tell that he has discovered the secret of agriculture. 

 His proximity to tlie sea enables him to obtain one of the best 

 and most permanent fertilizers, but sea and land both are com- 

 passed to furnish him with the foundation of his business. 

 The information he has afforded the committee on previous 

 occasions, and which has been incorporated into the transac- 

 tions of the society, is valuable as bearing upon this one point, 

 the proper mode of fertilizing as understood by a successful 

 practical farmer. 



It is unnecessary to give a detailed statement of Mr. Ware's 

 crops. Whatever they may have been in times past, they have 

 enabled him to bring a difficult tract of land, acre by acre, into 

 high cultivation, by means of good drainage and careful enrich- 

 mg. And if, as we have been told in another sphere in life, — 

 " success is a duty," — in agriculture it is also a recommenda- 

 tion which ought to give value to the opinions and operations of 

 him who secures it. 



We have endeavored to lay before the society, such facts and 

 suggestions as we have obtained from the farms visited during 

 the last season. We desired that they should be more explicit. 

 The value of experience in agriculture, cannot be too highly 

 estimated, even by those who look to science for a complete 

 regeneration of the whole farming world. We have no disposi- 

 tion to undervalue the labors of those diligent chemists and 

 geologists who have devoted their lives to examinations of soils 

 and of those chemical affinities which may make the " desert 

 blossom as the rose." We are perfectly willing to believe that 

 a system of agriculture may be drawn from books, during the 

 dull hours of a long sea-voyage, and applied to the hardest soil 

 of England, as the author of " Talpa, or the Chronicles of a 

 Clay Farm," professes to have done. We are willing to give all 

 due credit to those who would tell us by theory what manures 

 are adapted to one soil, and what to another ; what to trees 

 and what to potatoes. We have entire respect for the Liebigs, 

 and Hitchcocks, and Jacksons, who are led through the subtlest 



