ACRES ENOUGH UNDER THE PLOUGH. 157 



The wheat crop has been about twenty bushels to the acre. 

 That crop just about pays for the labor, and no more. It will 

 cost you just about twenty-five dollars an acre, if you charge 

 nothing for your manure. It will cost twenty-five dollars an 

 acre for corn. Reckoning the old price, one dollar a bushel 

 and one dollar for labor, you have made no profit. As farmers 

 say, they make no profit ; they must have means to bring up 

 their crop to seventy-five bushels an acre. It costs no more to 

 take care of seventy-five bushels than twenty-five, except a little 

 more labor in husking. That is the only additional expense. I 

 have had as high as one hundred bushels, but it did not pay. 

 I would never advise manuring so rich as that, because you get 

 your land too rich for your grain crop and grass crop. I have 

 cut three tons of hay to the acre, but it is full high enough. 

 Two and a half tons is about the maximum of hay which I 

 would recommend any farmer to undertake to get ; when he 

 has a sufficient quantity of manure to go beyond that, let him 

 increase his surface. 



Now, in Massachusetts, I would not advise the putting of 

 another acre under the plough beyond what is under the 

 plough now. If you can by any means increase your manure, 

 increase the product of what you have already under cultiva- 

 tion. But the great desideratum is manure, manure, manure. 

 And where are we to obtain it ? Gentlemen, I never could 

 have raised this land of mine without foreign aid. I might 

 have worked upon that land until I died, if I had only put 

 back upon it what I took off; it never would have come up. 

 There is land that will do it, but this is a poor piece of land. 

 Poor land, such as is found on most of the farms in Massachu- 

 setts, cannot be brought up to any very great extent without 

 the aid of foreign manures. Those who live near cities, and 

 can buy their manures, can manure as high as they please ; but" 

 we who live forty miles out in the country have no means of 

 getting manures except these stimulating manures of which we 

 have heard to-day — very proper, they say, excellent, to give your 

 crop a start and make your corn look better in July than in 

 October ; but they don't allow that the beneficial results are seen 

 at harvest. Stable-manure is effective — manure from cattle, 

 and specially the manure from hogs, night-soil and hen-manure; 

 but there is no manure so good, according to my observation, 



