ON CULTIVATION OF CROPS. 95 



A great crop may be the result of merely fictitious 

 circumstances, and the skill or judgment of the cul- 

 tivator may have very little to do with it. An 

 abundant harvest from a fertile field in a favorable 

 season, proves little more than that the cultivator 

 did nothing to impede the operations of nature. 

 The largest possible production must require the 

 best soil; agricultural skill is independent of the soil 

 on which it is exercised, and displays itself in over- 

 coming the difficulties of the ground, and rendering 

 it, in spite of them, subservient to its interests and 

 purposes. Premiums should be awarded upon evi- 

 dence of merit in the conduct of the crop. It is 

 very easy to be perceived that as much pains may 

 have been taken, and as much ability displayed in a 

 field, which from some unforeseen cause, from the 

 soil, from the seed, the ploughing, the manure and 

 the season not being all adapted to each other, or 

 from any peculiar unfitness in any two or more of 

 them, which has limited the produce to a medium 

 yield, as in another which has afforded one of the 

 largest crops. Take for instance corn or maize, 

 of which there are reckoned about one hundred and 

 thirty kinds or varieties. Each of these has proba- 

 bly its choice of soil, and may also prefer a certain 

 depth of soil, a sort and quality of manure, a season 

 of planting, hoeing, &c., peculiar to itself, and which 

 may be requisite in order to its highest state of 

 perfection. It is well known that different aspects 

 of the same mountains, and the different soils of 

 adjoining fields have for centuries produced wines of 

 very great diversity of quality and value. The 

 established character of the wine is maintained by 

 the greatest nicety in the cultivation of the vine, and 

 a settled course of culture is carefully adhered to. 

 It is perhaps strange that science should have aided 

 luxury so long and so much, and should have so long 

 neglected those subjects on which the ease and 

 comfort of the community depend. We have every 

 reason to suppose that there is an adaptation between 



