ECONOMY OF FARMING. 121 



ble to loss from accidental fliilures of the same. If we cultivate many, then the loss 

 which we sutfer from the failure of one fruit may be made up by the success of another. 

 Further, we must take care to keep our beasts and people appointed for the work in 

 constant useful activity, and this will only be possible when we cultivate a large va- 

 riety of plants : and because, finally, the stall-manure mixed with litter dissolves 

 itself only gradually ; thus can we, according to the proportion of the quantity and 

 quality of the same, draw benefit from it for several years ; only we must not expect 

 every year equally great harvests of plants which are of similar proportion as 

 to their need of hunms. But because some plants possess in a higher degree than 

 others the power to assimilate to themselves inorganic matter, therefore we may 

 obtain by their culture valuable harvests; provided, indeed, the mass of the humus in 

 the soil is only smaller, and not at variance with that crop which requires more, to 

 which belong, for example, vetches, peas, lentils, and buckwheat. 



19. But the greatest regard must be had to leave the plants so to follow 

 one another, that the condition in which the soil is left by the pre- 

 ceding fruit may be suited to the after-fruits ; so that on the one side the 

 plants may seize on that state of the division of the soil which is adapted 

 to their nature under the given circumstances of climate, and on the 

 other hand may avoid any extraordinary effort for its purification. 



20. If we cultivate in a suitable alternation on the same field such 

 plants as are raised to their usual development at wide intervals, and must 

 be frequently hoed and well hilled, with culmiferous fruit and other plants, 

 which by their thick state and the shadowing of the soil hinder the spring- 

 ing up of the weeds and the hardening of the soil, we shall then reach 

 the object perfectly. 



Potatoes, beets, Swedish-turnips, maize, beans, peas, tobacco, teazles, &c., must be 

 planted wide apart, and during their growth must be hoed, and up to the two last 

 be also hilled. Thus the field will be put into a loose and very clean state, and if it 

 is ploughed once after the harvest, it is sufficiently prepared for the following fruit : 

 Clover, luzerne, vetches, and lentils, grow so thick in a well- prepared soil that weeds 

 do not come up among them, and by hemp the field is kept in the cleanest state. It 

 is only by the culture of the culmiferous grains — which during the growth are not hoed, 

 and which, by their trembling state and their thin, early dried-up leaves, oppose little hin- 

 derance to the coming up of the weeds, and which allow the sun too great an influence 

 on the soil — that the field begins to waste ; and herein alone, and in nothing else, lies 

 the cause why we must watch, and not allow two culmiferous fruits to follow one 

 another, unless we immediately leave it fallow again, or raise a hoed fruit, or suffer 

 the field to lie for a pasture, or to a natural growth of grass. 



21. If there is at hand no suitable rotation -crop, then the clayey soil so 

 easily hardens and runs to waste in unfavorable weather, or in a cold and 

 moist climate, that it can only be restored by lying fallow. 



He who always sows culmiferous grain, and finds not time nor power to loosen 

 and clear the soil properly, in the interval from the harvest of the preceding fruit to 

 the sowing of the after-fruit, nothing remains for him in such circumstances, than to 

 give up the product of a year, and employ the whole summer in cleaning and pulve- 

 rizing the soil run to waste. 



22. The fallow, therefore, is never absolutely necessary, because the 

 object of the same can be obtained perfectly by hoed fruits ; it is only 

 accidentally necessary if we are hindered by the weather from imparting to 

 the clay soil that degree of loosening and cleaning which the culture of 

 plants demands. 



23. It is only then when the cultivation of the field must be carried on 

 with very small means of aid, or when the burden of the pasturage rests on 

 the fields, that one need resort to fallows. 



He who uses no fallows, must have more or stronger teams of cattle than he who 

 employs them ; because he must prepare his field suitably from the harvest of one 



