No. 144.] 557 



But there is a further use to which these crops are admirably 

 adapted — to butter making. The time is not far hence; nay, sir, 

 I believe that it ouglit to have already come, when farmers will 

 restrict the extent of their pastures to such fields as cannot be 

 made into meadow on account of uneven surface — when cattle 

 will be fed on old hay and roots through the months of April and 

 May; when every farmer will be heavily enough stocked to 

 make clean work of the flush of feed in June; and when green 

 crops for soiling will come in rotation, clover, sanfoin, corn, 

 &c., for the remainder of the season. The amount of stock kept 

 in this way in the country might be twice what it is now without 

 clearing another foot of land. Every man who keeps his horses 

 in the stable summers, and cuts grass for them, understands this, 

 and will not believe this estimate extravagant ; and when we take 

 into consideration the amount of labor spent on the inside fences 

 of the farm — a work that is avoided by the soiling policy — the 

 difference in expense for men is not so great as it might seem. 

 A number of large dairies in this State are practising this plan, 

 and all those agricultural implements that lengthen our arms 

 like mowing machines and reaping machines, and the little truck 

 cultivation, and the seed sower, tend to hasten its general adop- 

 tion. The English practice of manuring root crops has arisen 

 from the fact that they have no crop on which the manure can be 

 more profitably used. But we have such a crop in corn — a gross 

 feeder — one w^hose roots extend down into the soil in spite of any 

 obstacle of mechanical condition, if its food be there; and more 

 than all, one that cannot be cloyed with too high feed. What 

 could we desire more to precede roots 1 It was shown here, sir, 

 on a former occasion that the amount of the corn crop on old 

 land depended on the quantity of manure used rather than on the 

 amount of surface over which the manure was spread; that to turn 

 manure into corn to profit it should not be spread over too much 

 ground; that it ought to be thick enough to raise over fifty bushels 

 of shelled corn to the acre ; and allow me to add, sir, to-day, my 

 conviction, that if the laud in this State, annually manured and 

 planted to corn, were made less by one half or two-thirds, so 

 much less as to produce at least sixty bushels of shelled corn to 

 the acre, and the same land planted to carrots, beets and turnips 



