ESSAY. 



SUCCESSFUL AGRICULTURE. 



" Muck is the mother of meal." 



By the term Successful Agriculture we do not wish to 

 be understood to mean the success of the agriculturist. 

 A successful farmer is supposed to be one, who, by and 

 through the pursuit of his business, amasses wealth, 

 adds to his acres and -prospers in a pecuniary sense, 

 Successful agriculture, on the other hand, has no refer- 

 ence to extent of possessions nor in any considerable 

 degree to pecuniary results, but applies only to success 

 in the tilling of a given quantity of land. It is proposed 

 at the present time to direct attention mainly to one of 

 the more important, in fact, the most important one 

 of the indispensable requisites for a high degree of 

 success. Agriculture is the art of tilling the earth for 

 the sake of the product resulting from that tillage. 

 Tillage includes every operation which the farmer per- 

 forms from first to last for the benefit of a growing crop. 

 Preparation of the land, planting the seed, all of the 

 after cultivation and the harvesting of the product, are 

 covered and expressed by the term, tillage. 



Let us consider for a moment the particular motive 

 that governs us in performing each of these operations. 

 In the preparation of land for crops generally, 'draining 



