36 TRANSACTIONS. 



more progressive class of farmers that form societies, and 

 arrange exhibitions, like this, who have not some time 

 been victims of crude statements. Indeed, it is quite ex- 

 traordinary how many of what are now the prominent 

 subjects, most interesting and most discussed, relating to 

 practical husbandry, remain from year to year open and un- 

 decided questions, with about as much said on one side as 

 the other ; when nothing is wanted but trials enough and 

 attention enough, to settle them peremptorily. In Mas- 

 sachusetts alone, there are farmers enough at work, if 

 they would continue their observations, to determine any of 

 them in two seasons. Make what allowance you will for 

 that wide margin of uncertainty that always hangs about 

 a business so dependent on seasons and weather, still, I 

 say, Nature, reverentially and resolutely studied, never 

 cheats her disciples. Find her laws, and, rely upon it, 

 they never will miscarry. You have only to talk with 

 your neighbors, or turn over the files of any agricultural 

 journal, to find examples of what I refer to. What uni- 

 versal rules have been established, for instance, as to the 

 mode of applying manures ? Yet why should there not 

 be rules, for all cases, as much as for the silversmith in 

 mingling metals, or the apothecary drugs ? Subsoiling 

 has been preached for some five years past, both here and 

 in England, as the Columbus discovery of modern tillage, 

 revealing to every farmer a new territory underneath his 

 cultivated one ; you are pointed to Lord John Russell's 

 turnips, and the Rackheath wheat. But does the practice 

 actually apply as well to New England as Old ? Is there 

 an oifset to its benefits in later crops and more exposure to 

 frost ] AVhat are its relations to under-drainage 1 Does it 

 relieve wet lands, or render them more hopelessly soaked 

 and spongy 1 Is it equally good for a dry, friable soil on a 

 sand-hill, as I have seen to be true in one case, or is it any 

 better than the common deep ploughing as they practise it 

 in Surrey and some parts of Yorkshire"? Now what I 

 affirm is, that each of these queries ought to have one, 

 definite, indisputable, experimental answer, recorded where 

 it can be got at ; an answer put beyond the region of con- 

 jecture, and rooted in authenticated facts. 



