472 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



slatternly done, every thing of a cast that you could not com- 

 mend. You see also there, as here, a better species of culti- 

 vation, in which the farmer is neat, is industrious, does every 

 thing in a way which would have been up with the beginning, but 

 is not up with the middle, of the nineteenth century. You could 

 not commend this to our imitation. Why should not the farmer, 

 whose profession is sufficiently laborious and not too lucrative, 

 avail himself of the very latest improvements ? Especially 

 now, when thought, inquiry, intellect are brought to bear on 

 his employment, should the farmer be up with the times. 



But aside from that careless, slovenly farming, which was 

 never fit for any age, and that listless, uninquiring course, 

 which, to say the least, is unfit for the noon of the nineteenth 

 century, there is a great deal of the cultivation of the soil in 

 Great Britain which you would admire. The land is ploughed 

 deeply — so deeply as to afford all but an absolute guaranty 

 against injury from too much or too little rain,* it is so pulver- 

 ized as to furnish an almost perfect seed bed ; the manure, if 

 not put in the drill, is so perfectly mixed with the whole body 

 of the soil that no root or rootlet need go out of its way in 

 search of food. I am aware that, in consequence of the dear- 

 ness of labor, it may not be wise, in many cases, for us to cul- 

 tivate with the same nicety that some Englishmen and Scotch- 

 men do ; but certainly the time has come for us to inquire 

 whether good cultivation, even at " a dollar a day and found," 

 is not more profitable than running haphazard over the ground 

 and doing nothing as it should be done. 



Hardly any thing in the farmer's calendar is so important as 

 the management of manures. I have been into barns in Eng- 

 land where the air was so completely charged with ammonia 

 that its effect on the olfactory nerves was like that of Scotch 

 snuff. Its effect on the eyes was enough to make tho hardest- 

 hearted man in the world weep living tears. If some of the 

 real Scotch yellow were to blow into the eyes, it would hardly 

 produce a more speedy lachrymation. I have been into other 

 barns, where scarcely an offensive odor could be detected. 

 Now, what made the difference ? The barns were tight in both 

 cases; they were not very well ventilated in cither; but in one 

 case nothing had been done to prevent the waste of manure 



