AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 103 



process that has been hitherto generally and successfully em- 

 ployed to divest it. 



An ingenious and enterprising gentleman in the neigbor- 

 hood of Lexington has been, ever since the erection of the 

 abjve-mentioned machine, trying various experiments, by 

 altering and improving it, to produce one more perfect, which 

 might be beneficially employed on rotted hemp, to diminish 

 the labors of the brake. He mentioned the other day that 

 all of them had failed ; that he had returned to the old hand 

 brake, and that he was convinced that it answered the pur- 

 pose better than any substitute with which he was acquaint- 

 ed. I observe Mr. H. L. Barnum has recently advertised a 

 machine which he has constructed for breaking and dressing 

 hemp and flax, which can be procured at the establishment 

 of Mr. Smith, in Cincinnati. I most cordially wish him suc- 

 cess ; but the number of failures which I have witnessed, 

 during a period of thirty years, in the attempt to supersede 

 manual labor by the substitution of that of machines, induces 

 me to fear that it will be long before this desideratum is 

 attained. 



The quantity of net hemp produced to the acre is from six 

 hundred to one thousand weight, varying according to the 

 fertility and preparation of the soil and the state of the sea- 

 son. It is said that the quantity which any field will produce 

 may be anticipated by the average height of the plants 

 throughout the field. Thus, if the plants will average eight 

 feet in height, the acre will yield eight hundred weight of 

 hemp ; each foot in height corresponding to a hundred weight 

 of the lint. 



Hemp exhausts the soil slowly, if at all. An old and suc- 

 cessful cultivator told me that he had taken thirteen or four- 

 teen successive crops from the same field, and that the last 

 was the best. That was probably however owing to a con- 

 currence of favorable circumstances. Nothing cleanses and 

 prepares the earth better for other crops (especially for small 

 grain or grasses) than hemp. It eradicates all weeds, and 

 when it is taken off', leaves the field not only clean, but smooth 

 and even. 



The rich lands of Ohio. Indiana, and Illinois, are, I have 

 no doubt, generally well adapted to the cultivation of this 

 valuable plant ; and those states enjoy some advantages for 

 the cultivation of it which this docs not possess. Their 

 streams do not dry up as much as ours, and they conse- 

 quently employ better than we can the agency of water in 



