premium of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society ; a disser- 

 tation, deserving the attention of every inquisitive farmer. 



The next means of improving your lands is to extend your 

 cultivation. The more produce to be consumed, the more 

 manure to be applied ; and so the enriching and improvement 

 of your land may be kept on in a continually accelerated ratio, 

 I am aware that the proposition to extend your cultivation, with 

 a view to the improvement of your farms, will be received with 

 distrust ; this will excuse me for dwelling upon it more at large. 

 I will give you my opinion j and shall be happy to be correct- 

 ed by your better judgment. 



I admit that in general it is a good rule in husbandry, to 

 cultivate no more land than you can manure well ; and to ma- 

 nure well and tend well all you do cultivate. I would recom- 

 mend it as strongly as any one ; but under peculiar circum- 

 stances there are excepted cases to every rule however rea- 

 sonable. Your farm is run down and impoverished. You 

 wish to restore it ; to wake its dormant energies ; and, if pos- 

 sible, to make it stand upright again. Agricultural improve- 

 ments are always slow. It requires a year to accomplish the 

 most simple experiment ; and often many years to effect any 

 extraordinary alteration. But there must be a beginning, aud 

 the first step in any valuable undertaking is commonly diffi- 

 cult and discouraging. When Ledyard, a lad, animated 

 by the indomitable spirit of adventure, first launched his frail 

 canoe, more than a hundred miles from this spotxm the waters 

 of the Connecticut, to him an unexplored stream, it required 

 a bold heart to push from the shore into the descending cur- 

 rent ; but as he was borne along its winding and fertile banks, 

 he was cheered by the consciousness of his onward progress 

 and triumphant adventure ; and continually more and more 

 animated by the hope of farther knowledge, success, and 

 power. This confidence of progress, this hope of ultimate suc- 

 cess, certain to persevering and judicious labor, is the great 

 encouragement, which is to sustain us. 



Let us suppose, then, that you have an impoverished acre of 



C 



