FARMS. 103 



manure which will make the largest return for the expenditure 

 made upon them. Now it is a fact not requiring proof, that to 

 a great extent, the very opposite practice prevails. Lean, 

 hungry, barren or worn-out soils, which have no strength in 

 themselves, arc planted year after year. Consequently they 

 must be annually supplied with all the elements of fertility 

 which they possess. The reasons why they are selected for 

 cultivation are various. One probably is this, that they would 

 produce nothing if let alone; another, that the predecessors of 

 the present occupants always treated them in this way. Often 

 perhaps the cause may be that they are more conveniently 

 accessible than other and stronger parcels of the farm. What- 

 ever it may be, it is certain, that if a careful account Avas kept, 

 in nine cases out of ten their meagre products would not pay 

 for themselves. Cultivators of such soils do not count the 

 cost. Were they called upon to take a starving ox and fatten 

 him for the butcher, their first step would be to ascertain if the 

 expense of feeding would not exceed the value of the animal 

 when fattened. And yet without giving the matter a single 

 thought they take a very lean piece of land, manure it, labor 

 upon it, harvest its scanty product which is not worth the cost 

 of production, and never have a suspicion that it is not an 

 exhibition of economy in farm management. But in many 

 instances the poorest lands of a farm are adjacent to the 

 buildings, and the question will be asked, what can be done with 

 them. We answer, sow them with birch seed, cover them with 

 white pines. If they must l)e cultivated, sow them with buck- 

 wheat and keep bees, or throw them down to permanent pasture 

 and feed them with sbeep or let them run to waste. The last 

 is better than to throw away money upon them. If manure 

 and labor were applied by us only to those portions of our farms 

 which produce tolerably well without either, they would yield 

 double, quadruple, in some instances tenfold, more than many 

 of the fields do upon which they are now wasted. It will at all 

 times make the difference between getting about half what the 

 manure and labor is actually worth or a double profit on both. 

 Those portions of a farm in themselves fertile always yield an 

 income. Those which are in themselves unproductive, work 

 upon them and manure them as you may, never do. The loss 

 sustained by their cultivation is a charge upon the rest of the 



