218 Beport on Trials of Plows. 



Class IV. 



The State Agricultural Society of New York has long been 

 deeply impressed with the conviction that no one thing was more 

 essential for the enhancement of the profits of agriculture than a 

 deeper and more perfect tillage, and that no one cause was more 

 operative in. causing the diminution of several of our most 

 important crops per acre than shallow plowing. In some counties 

 the produce per acre is increasing, in others it is diminishing. 

 In the former the plow runs deeper every year, in the latter it 

 merely skims the surface. In these counties the plow rarely runs 

 deeper than three inches. In some of our best counties the 

 plowing is done as deep as eight or ten inches, but the average 

 depth of plowing over the whole area of the State does not 

 exceed four and a half inches. 



It is true that in some sections the surface soil is underlaid by 

 a subsoil which, when first brought to the surface in large quan- 

 tities, is injurious to vegetation; but there are very few subsoils 

 in the State that are so bad that if plowed in the fall, and one 

 inch of them is brought to the surface where it can be exposed 

 to the ameliorating influence of the atmosphere and the winter 

 frosts they will not perceptibly increase the crop. * If this pro- 

 cess is resorted to every other year, almost any soil may be deep- 

 ened in sixteen years from four inches to twelve inches, thus 

 trebling the range of pasture for the roots of plants, and doubling 

 if not trebling the amount of the crop. 



This is not the language of theory, but of sober and often 

 repeated experiments made in every section of the State. 



We might write a volume filled with experiments carefully 

 made by weight and measure to illustrate the importance of deep 

 plowing, but we content ourselves with a statement submitted to 

 us by an eminent agriculturalist and statesman whose name would 

 be a suflicient guarantee for its correctness in any part of the 

 United States, which is as follows: 



"Some two or three weeks since I visited a farm near here 

 which a young man bought six years ago who used to work for 

 me. When he bought this place it had a barn on it 30 by 40 

 feet, and it held the entire crop that the farm was capable of 

 jiroducing. He built a barn the first year 100 feet long by 40 

 feet wide and 20 foot posts, and stabling all below this. This 



♦ Mr. Howard dissents from this opinion. 



