Proceedings of tee Farmers' Club. 527 



ishes as you go down from the surface, let the subsoil plow be 

 employed to follow the common plow, and thus plow deep, and 

 at the same time operate with nature in keeping the soil right 

 side up. 



Mr. Wm. Lawton, in moving the publication of Mr. Todd's 

 paper, said he was glad such a statement had been prepared by a 

 practical farmer; that mischief might ensue, if the Club should 

 indorse, without any qualification, the views advanced last week 

 by one who brings to the advocacy of any theory the weight of a 

 great name. 



Mr. Wm. S. Carpenter. — I am glad that Mr. Todd has read this 

 paper, for it would do much damage to have it go out from this 

 Club, that deep plowing is good, regardless of the soil's fertility. 



Mr. A. S. Fuller. — I am on a poor sandy soil, and still plow 

 deep. I turn the surface soil to the bottom for a basis to manure 

 on, and I intend to manure all the way from top to bottom. 



Mr. P. T. Quinn. — I have farmed in New Jersey for seventeen 

 years, and never knew an acre of land, however poor, hurt by deep 

 plowing. To be sure, putting the surface too deep down, will 

 cause the next year's corn crop to look yellow. Deep plowing 

 should be done gradually, and the soil kept up with manure. 



Hon. George Geddes, of Western New York, then said, that on 

 the soil of his part of the State, the best farmers were those who 

 plowed the deepest. Below the mold they have a hard clay, made 

 of disintegrated shale, and every year the best cultivators are going 

 a little deeper, and bringing up an inch or two of that subsoil, and 

 mixing it with the old mold, and the farms increase in fertility. 

 He thinks clover the best of all crops on such newly upturned 

 earth. He has a field at a distance from his barns, where wheat 

 was raised in 1790, and last year it grew twenty-four bushels per 

 acre; the year previous, twenty-five bushels. He does nothing to 

 it, but noAv and then turn under a crop of clover. 



Dr. Grant, of lona, the inventor of the deep plows exhibited last 

 week, said he did not suppose farmers would or should turn up all 

 fields to the depth of two or three feet. Judgment must, of course, 

 be used in this as in other operations of the farm. But in France 

 the rule as to deep plowing is, that one should make a seed bed 

 from sixteen to twenty-four inches in depth. At some time he 

 proposes to submit to the Club an essay on this subject, showing 

 where and when to plow deep. 



