FARMERS' CLUB. 



REPORTS OF MEETINGS. 



May 15, 1S49. 



Samuel Allen, in the chair. Henry Meigs, Secretary. 



Mr. Meigs — said that the subject for the day was of very great im- 

 portance: The best mode of raising seeds, preserving and planting. 

 We are apt to be too negligent in this matter, forgetting that the like 

 rules which produce the best blood, and every good quality in our 

 domestic animals, are to be observed in the vegetable kingdom. No 

 part of animated nature more distinctly announces origin, care or 

 quality, than the vegetable kingdom. The same plant, under differ- 

 ent treatment from its seed to its ultimate development, can be made 

 (as in dwarf trees) three inches high or one hundred feet high. The 

 Chinese dwarf tree artist was full of enthusiasm in viewing the dwarf 

 tree, and foreseeing that at one hundred years of age, it would but 

 be zfew inches high. In size, but more in quantity, and yet more in 

 quality, by careful selection of seed, can man grow delicious wheat 

 easily to fifty bushels per acre, or by want of knowledge or care be 

 condemned to reap a scattered crop of poor wheat of less than ten 

 bushels per acre. And, according to the late experiment tried most 

 faithfully in an experimental garden near Paris, the wheat crop de- 

 pends most seriously upon the depth at which the seed is planted < It 

 was decided, past all doubt, that about two inches was the right depth 

 for best and largest yield ; so that we are able to assert positively 

 that if all the seed on an acre is placed at that depth, the greatest pos- 

 sible yield is to be had. Select perfect seeds from the most perfect 

 plants in continual succession, and we attain the highest value of crops. 

 It is also in the infancy of a plant that its ultimate value is to be es- 

 tabhshed. It is a law of both vegetable and animal life. We are 



