will pay,— and thip will be the raethnd of "New England fanning restored." 

 What now are the strong points, the characteristics of this method ? Take first 

 not theories but existiag facts carefully prepared and supported, — take farming 

 in England, or where it is better still, in Belgium or Holland (and who shall 

 say that we are not equal to our fathers ?) The average wheat yield of Enuland 

 is 33 bushels to the acre, though it frequently runs higher. The Channel isl- 

 ands, Guernsey and Alderney, have produced 72 bushels to the acre. Was this 

 fancy farming ? No, it was only sharp work for the living of the family. 

 Was it done by new specialties ? No, but by the niost careful use of old facts 

 and resources that are universal. By judicious fertilizing, the wheat head 

 was doubled in length, and then the stalk was strengthened t.) suntain it It is 

 by saving every drop and every spoonful, Ucty, every odor that will fertilize, 

 keeping the breath of death from the lungs and bli)od, and turning it into sweet 

 food for the stomach. Especially are the liquids of the cow stable, horse l)arn, 

 and dwelling all utilized — a gallon from the first, a quart from the second, and 

 a pint from the third are each equal in value. 



Literally everything that has been once used by nature or man takes 

 another degree in the great round of going and returning. 



In matured communities and countries like England, indeed Western Europe 

 in general, where a settled order, a final condition of things may be supposed to 

 exist, land is regarded more as a place to hold the seed and, in the same thought, 

 the fertilizer. Far less reliance than with us is placed upon the natural strength 

 of land without manure. And this is in the main the correct theory. The 

 vegetable mold of the primeval forest is soon consumed. Nay the richest 

 farms by far — those which support the greatest numbers to the square mile — the 

 Belgian plains and the hollow lands of Holland, brought no dower from Nature. 

 They were plains of moving sand reclaimed from the ocean, and the soil or foun- 

 dation was held down by a spread of sea weed. Then patches of clover were 

 coaxed in, then a sward, then a garden — 470 people to the square mile, and a 

 cow to every two acres. It is a rule with them that every individual, brute 

 or human, every resident of barn or house, should answer to the fertili- 

 zation of one- half of an acre of ground yearly. And it is a rule that health, 

 economy, nay decency demands. In the common practices of drainage or sew- 

 erage, we hardly know which to condemn first, its waste, ils Jilthiness, or its poi- 

 soning. If Heaven were to give us a special revelation, and we should presume 

 reverently to anticipate its character by judging fronj human needs and human 

 suffering, it would settle no vexed questions of faith, start no new dogmas, 

 open no new doors to the spirit world for those who are imitating yr)ung John 

 Chivery, who, as Dickens tells us, caught cold m one eye by peeping throutih 

 the key hole. No, it would rather unfold to mankind that wonderful miracle 

 of mercy and beauty by which, all that the uses of human life and nature have 

 rejected, should be kept from befouling water and poisoning air, not only 

 with typhoid, and cholera, and diphtheria, but that these same germs and 

 exhalations of death should inbreathe themselves and pass by the wonderful 

 processes of Nature into the richness and sweetness of fruit and food. For it 

 is only the very dregs of the sewer's festering foulness that can give that ex- 



