NATUKAL MANURE. 27 



sell. My rule is to sell nothing but wiieat, barley, beans, potatoes, 

 clover-seed, apples, wool, mutton, beef, pork, and butter. Every- 

 thing else is consumed on the farm corn, peas, oats, mustard, 

 rape, mangels, clover, straw, stalks, etc. Let us make a rough 

 estimate of how much is sold and how much retained on a hun- 

 dred-acre farm, leaving out the potatoes, beans, and live-stock. 

 We have say : 

 Sold. 



15 acres wheat, @ 40 bushels per acre 18 tons. 



5 " barley, @ 50 " " 6 " 



15 " clover seed, 4 " " 1* ton. 



Total sold 25$ tons. 



Kctained on the farm. 



15 acres corn, @ 80 bushels per acre 03i tons. 



Corn stalks from do 40 



5 acres barley straw 8 



10 " oats and peas, equal 80 bushels of oats 1C* 



Straw from do 20 



15 acres wheat-straw i 25 



15 " clover-hay , 25 



Clover-seed straw 10 



15 acres pasture and meadow, equal 40 tons hay 40 



5 " mustard, equal 10 tons hay 10 



5 " rape, equal 10 tons hay 10 



5 " mangels, 25 tons per acre, equal to 3 tons dry 15 



Leaves from do 3 



Total retained on the farm 252* tons. 



It would take a good many years to exhaust any ordinary soil 

 by such a course of cropping. Except, perhaps, the sandy knolls, 

 I think there is not an acre on my farm that would be exhausted 

 in ten thousand years, and as some portions of the low alluvial 

 soil will grow crops without manure, there will be an opportunity 

 to give the poor, sandy knolls more than their share of plant-food. 

 In this way, notwithstanding the fact that we sell produce and 

 bring nothing back, I believe the whole farm will gradually 

 increase in productiveness. The plant-food annually rendered 

 available from the decomposition and disintegration of the inert 

 organic and mineral matter in the soil, will be more than equal to 

 that exported from the farm. If the soil becomes deficient in any- 

 thing, it is likely that it will be in phosphates, and a little super- 

 phosphate or bone-dust might at any rate be profitably used en 

 the rape, mustard, and turnips. 



The point in good farming is to develop from the latent stores 



