336 Transactions of the American Institute. 



and are shot by thousands for the epicures of Philadelphia. The 

 people who eat these little birds probably do not know what special 

 favorites they are with us; how elegant their summer plumage, 

 how amusing their chatter, or how useful they are as feeding upon 

 the canker worm and other injurious insects. 



Our travels in Salem county, included some thirty or forty miles. 

 "We were in four townships, but our observations were chiefly in 

 one — Mannington. As this township is exclusively agricultural 

 (all farms), the following statistics are valuable: 



Whole number of acres of improved land 18,696 



Average value per acre $110 



Unimproved land, including meadow, acres 4,106 



Average value of this 822 



Of the whole the average value is 92 



Add one-half value or about what the whole would sell for 138 



But most of the farms would bring about $200 per acre. 



The value of this township for taxable purposes is more than 

 $3,000,000. 



As population increases, the question of how much richer rich 

 land can be made, will be one of the great problems in agriculture. 

 It has been found that six tons of marl to an acre, on poor land or 

 worn-out laud, will double its value by doubling the crops. A 

 Salem county ftirmer told us that he had once put marl into the 

 hills of potatoes, and that, seven years after, wheat on that field 

 showed plainly the spots of marl. 



If all subsequent applications would produce similar eflfects to 

 these, farming would soon become one of the exact sciences. But 

 this is not so. A soil exclusively of marl would produce nothing. 

 Neither would one of lime, or ashes, or gypsum, or barnyard 

 manure. Just how to regulate all this — how to alternate the 

 applications, of fertilizers and how much to apply at each time, 

 together with a proper rotation of crops, so as to produce the most 

 human food and the most profit, will some day become the pro- 

 foundest question of political economy. The agricultural chemist 

 and the practical farmer acting in concert may approximate, but it 

 will still be an unfinished science. The farmers in the township 

 of Mannington are working at this problem, not only as farmers, 

 but the libraries we saw there showed them to be men of science 

 also. Were all the three millions of acres of farming land in the 

 State of New Jersey worth $138 per acre, the total would be more 



