386 NORFOLK SOCIETY. 



the average cost and net profits of them ; the improvements 

 made upon meadows and waste lands, with the expense and 

 result of them ; and all such facts pertaining to the subject as 

 will enable them to present, in a combined report, a general 

 view of the agriculture of the county. We believe that the 

 results of such a measure would be much more serviceable than 

 are the reports, which necessarily embrace only the condition of 

 a few particular farms. Competition for the premiums offered 

 by the society may still be invited, and, "we think, would be 

 increased. One of the chief causes of the want of competi- 

 tion, which we so much regret, consists, perhaps, of a vague 

 apprehension of inferior claims to success, which a compre- 

 hensive view of the agriculture of the county might remove. 



Your committee venture to recommend, also, a more thor- 

 ough comminution of the soil to be prepared for any crop, and 

 commingling of the manure applied to it, than is generally 

 obtained in the ordinary methods of cultivation. We appre- 

 hend that the neglect of this entire disintegration of the earthy 

 particles, and intimate blending with them of fertilizing sub- 

 stances, is the cause of many failures in our agricultural ex- 

 periments, and of many complaints of the barrenness of our 

 soils. It is often the result of what is intended to be a pru- 

 dent and economical management of a farm ; but a saving of 

 labor and expense here, will generally prove injudicious, by a 

 large diminution of expected crops. The well known fertility 

 of alluvial soils in our own State, and of the rich bottom lands 

 in the Western prairies, is, in part, the consequence of the fine- 

 ness of their constituent particles, " giving them," as it has 

 been said, " a superior power for the absorption, retention and 

 condensation of moisture, carbonic acid and aiumonia, with 

 an opportunity for the free permeation of atmospheric air, and 

 a facility for the rootlets of plants to extend, and to receive 

 and appropriate nourishment." 



Experience and observation have forced upon us the convic- 

 tion that manures act most serviceably, in the cultivation of 

 any crop, when deposited near to the surface of the ground. 

 Taking this remark in connection with what had preceded it, 

 the cultivator cannot bestow too much pains upon the deep and 

 repeated ploughing of the soil, and the immediate and many 

 times repeated haiTowing in of manure spread upon its surface. 



