120 ECONOMY OF FARMING. 



" All plants require alkalies, &c. ; where those are in combination with silicic acid, 

 the ashes obtained from the incineration of the plant contain no carbonic acid, &c." 

 See Leirig's Organic Chemistry, Cambridge edition, pp. 214, and onward. The 

 whole of this valuable work deserves the reflecting study of all our intelligent farmers ; 

 for in it they will find explained many of those questions of deep practical interest 

 which force themselves upon their minds while carrying on the operations o^ their 

 Agriculture ; and they may derive from it, too, many important rules for the regulation 

 of their usual husbandry. More here might be quoted on some of the preceding pro 

 positions of our Author, from Veit, Thaer, and others, but it seems unnecessary, as 

 many of the topics which appear to need farther illustration have already been casu- 

 ally embraced in the various extracts heretofore made from those authors. — Tr.] 



17. Whoever manures his field, can cultivate the same fruit continuously 

 with equal results, if between the harvest and the sowing-time a sufficient 

 period be given to prepare the soil suitably, and if he also takes care that 

 the field shall be cleared of weeds. 



Summer-fruits may always be cultivated on the same field, if one only takes care 

 to manure it; but with winter-fruits, especially wheat, it does not always succeed, 

 because between the harvest and the time of sowing, the period is often too short to 

 clear the field, by repeated ploughing of the weeds, and reduce the hardened soil. 

 That one can always cultivate head-cabbage, hemp, maize, potatoes, in the same 

 field with equally good results, no one sc^arcely doubts ; and whoever does doubt it, 

 can easily convince himself at any time of the correctness of this fact. But may not 

 that which succeeds with maize and hemp, also do so with barley, oats, and summer- 

 wheat? If one supplies the quantity and quality of manure proper for these plants, 

 it is undoubtedly true. I know the field oi" a butcher which he has sowed for 20 years 

 with barley, and every year scattered on it some sheep-dung, and which has pro- 

 duced him continually the richest harvests. Surely we can always cultivate oats and 

 barley on the same field with equal results if we think it profitable. But because 

 summer culmiferous fruit, manured with fresh stall-manure in moist weather, more 

 easily lodges and becomes rusty than if it were sown in the second and third year af- 

 ter manuring, so we had always much rather take such summer-fruits for fresh ma- 

 nuring, which the manure will injure in no weather. Winter-wheat we cannot sow 

 after winter-wheat in Northern Europe for many reasons ; because the period of 

 time from the harvest in August till the sowing-time at the end of September, is too 

 short, and usually too moist, to clear and pulverize the clayey soil by repeated plough- 

 ing ; because the soil, by too frequent ploughings following one another too rapidly, 

 causes too much work in too short a time ; because it may easily become too loose, 

 whereby the plants are winter-killed, and because the crude stall-manure, and the 

 late sowing of the seed occasion rust and blight. But in the South of Europe, one 

 may sow with good success frequently winter-wheat many times in succession, in the 

 same field. In the South of France, Arthur Young saw the fields of luzerne broken 

 up three times in succession, sowed with wheat without any damage being occa- 

 sioned, and in the newly broken up rich marshy fields in the South of Hungary, they 

 cultivate wheat many years in succession. But winter-rye one may raise with us as 

 well as in Western Germany continuously in the same field, since this fruit is here 

 cleared from the field at the end of June, and therefore allows us time to plough re- 

 peatedly till the end of September. Rye also can be raised on a loose soil, and it 

 Buflfers not from the strong loosening ; it is also scarcely liable to blight, and very 

 rarely to rust, and the fresh manure frequently does it less injury than it does 

 wheat. 



18. But because on account of the division of labor and the danger of 

 the failure of the crop, we cultivate many plants for fodder and grain, and 

 because the usual manure wdiich we carry into the field is only gradually 

 dissolved in the course of many years, therefore we must cause the plants 

 fixed on for our fields, so to follow one another that the quantity of manure 

 may not be injurious to the plants, and the remainder of it which is still left 

 in the field after the harvest of the preceding fruit, may also correspond 

 to the need of the after-fruit. 



If we cultivate only a small variety of the fruits of cultivated land, then we are lia- 



