214 ROTATION OF CROPS. 



select a series of crops more exhausting than the foregoing ; and on the principle upon which 

 rotations are recommended, it is difficult to defend it from objections of a serious kind. The 

 same may be said of another rotation, referred to in the same paper, viz : manure, roots, oats with 

 clover, beans, wheat. It is rather remarkable that beans and wheat are cultivated as they are, for 

 beans, both in its foliage and fruit or seed, contains a large amount of phosphates. Bean leaveg 

 and stems are highly valuable, as a fodder for sheep ; and the bean itself is unequalled by any 

 seed for the amount of muscle and force which it imparts to the system. It seems plain, then, if 

 the foregoing remarks are true, that so far as ultimate exhaustion of the soil is concerned, there 

 can be but slender grounds of choice between cultivating one of those crops, for the same num- 

 ber of years, and a rotation of the many proposed. There must be other advantages in the ro- 

 tation than those which concern the fertility of the soil, or else the advantages of such a rotation 

 must be questioned. If rotation, then, is of so much consequence, and if those proposed are 

 objectionable, what rotation will be an improvement upon them 1 An answer to this question 

 has been attempted more than once ; and there are inherent difficulties in it, arising from the 

 fact that all the products of human industry which are derived from the soil, are expensive : 

 all the cereals and grasses, with the clovers, root crops and herbage crops, are rich either in 

 phosphates or the alkalies, or both ; and as some portions of the crops are to be removed and 

 sold at a distance, exhaustion necessarily follows. In the cultivation of sugar cane it is cus 

 tomary to return a large proportion of the stalk to the soil, after employing it for fire wood. 

 The ability to restore to the soil a portion of the crop, in the form of ash, as in the sugar cane, 

 or in straw, as in the cereals, becomes an important matter, and is not lost sight of by the 

 farmers of New-York, or the southern planter. Now, although much has been said and written 

 on rotation, and the exact order in which crops should succeed each other, I think it very 

 doubtful whether any one which has been proposed is free from serious objections ; and I think 

 it will be clear, on reflection, that there is no rotation which can become general, or which 

 may be followed with equal success in different parts of New- York, much less in the United 

 States. A rotation which may be regarded as suitable in England, will not, on that account, 

 succeed here. In the first place, crops are raised for profit, and in the second place, there is 

 no profitable crop that is not exhausting ; and no farmer will be deterred from raising a given 

 crop on account of its effects on the soil, provided only it remunerates him better than any 

 other production. Then again, that crop which is profitable near a city or village, is not one 

 which will pay in the country ; location and market must, therefore, govern the husbandry of 

 a countrj- to a great extent. When it is once fully felt that land refuses to yield its increase, 

 because an important element has been removed by cultivation ; that it is not owing to any 

 injurious substance imparted to the soil by the crop itself; that the whole difficulty, so far as 

 soil is concerned, in raising perpetually any given crop, resolves itself into exhaustion, and 

 nothing else, then the farmers will not be troubled in devising a rotation for the sake of a rota- 

 tion. The principle which will govern him will be profit. But as profit forbids a course of 

 husbandry which will end in exhaustion of the soil, or in the growth of weeds, that plan will 

 be pursued with due regard to the preservation of the soil in a healthy condition ; and hence, 



