AGKICULTURALECONOMY. 59 



area, if well tilled, would produce one thousand ; — or three bushels of 

 Tye per acre, when forty should be produced on the same surface ; — nor 

 •one-half a ton of hay per acre, when four can be produced — nor wheat 

 at ten bushels per acre, when sixty may be produced under right cul- 

 ture — nor corn at fifteen bushels per acre, when the best culture pro- 

 duces one hundred and^fifty. 



There are numerous other kindred topics, that might be presented 

 for consideration in connection with agricultural economy — such as 

 labor, whether performed by man, or by beasts, trained for the pur- 

 pose — or by some other agent of power, as steam — the planting and 

 cultivating of orchards — draining and irrigating — liquid manures as 

 a substitute for those in common use — the employment of lime, how, 

 when and where — the rotation of crops — subsoil-ploughing — the 

 ■number of times a field should be stirred with the plough before 

 planting or sowing the seed, — whether fall ploughing shall be aban- 

 doned, — the mode of tilling with the hoe or cultivator, or both — the 

 surest method of destroying noxious weeds, — the best way and time 

 of harvesting corn, and other grains — when to cut grass to be made 

 into hay — and how to make it, so as to render it the most nutritious 

 — the cooking of food for swine and other domestic animals— and in 

 fine, Geognosy, Geoscopy, Meteorology, Botany, Zoology, Ornithol- 

 ogy and Entomology, so far as these relate to the Economy of Agri- 

 culture, But instead of an Essay, these topics would furnish matter, 

 if rightly discussed, to wit, in the light of "knowledge derived from 

 experience," sufficient to make volumes. They are all, it will be 

 admitted, intimately related to the topic under consideration. And 

 the completion of the science and the perfecting of the art of the 

 Economy of Agriculture, will never be reached, until these relations, 

 as aforesaid, are all studied and learned in Nature's great Laboratory. 



An attempt has been made in this brief Essay, to awaken the at- 

 tention of farmers and others to the importance of the Economy of 

 Agriculture — the Economy of an art that has done, and is doing 

 more for the advancement of civilization and the perfection of man 

 as a social being, than any other of the great family of Industrial 

 Arts, — an art which in ancient times engaged the attention and occu- 

 pied the time of patriarchs and prophets, — men who lived in close 

 communion with God— and from which Jesus, both the Example and 

 Savior of man, drew his most striking and instructive parabolic les- 

 sons of infinite wisdom — an art that has had attractions for a Xeno- 

 phon, a Virgil, a Cato, Cicero, Cincinnatus, and a long line of names 

 DOWN to our own ever honored Washington and Webstek — all 



