494 TliAXSACTIOXS OF THE AjiERICAX INSTITUTE. 



crop." Is this true ? If so, agriculture becomes at once a fixed 

 science, and the struggle for life that Durwin speaks of is ended ; 

 there will be no more struggling except to push in the plo\v, and 

 steam will probably soon do that. 



I have lately been assured by letters from Salem county that the 

 field plowed only three inches deep, so often spoken of, has yielded 

 sixty bushels of shelled corn to the acre, except where shaded by 

 adjacent woods. That district of country was parched by a drouth 

 of six weeks when we saw it, and it continued six longer. During 

 all tliese twelve weeks they had a few slight showers, but not enouo-h 

 at any time to reach the gro^'ing potatoes in the hills. Kow, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Greeley's theory, had that field been plowed six inches 

 deep, it would have yielded 120 bushels of shelled corn to the acre, 

 for certainly it was dry enough to come up to his requirement in that 

 resjiect. 



Here is some corn sent me by Joshua Thompson of Elsinborougli 

 township, near the city of Salem. He has forty acres of such corn, 

 and his Quaker neighbors M-rite me that every acre will pnxluce 100 

 bushels of shelled corn. He plows as his neighbors do, five inches 

 or under. The drouth extended to this farm also, but was not so 

 severe as a few miles away. Would he have had 200 bushels by 

 plowina' ten or twelve inches deep ? On the contrary, probably not 

 fifty. \ ^ 



In consideration of tliis crop being four or five times more than the 

 average crop of corn of the United States, it may be interesting to 

 know Mr. Thompson's management. He has eighty acres of upland ; 

 one-half is in with corn, and one-half with wheat every year. The 

 rotation is corn, wheat, and clover, or clover, corn, and wheat ; but 

 oh, how he does put on the hani-yanl manure. Mr. T. is one of the 

 Salem county larmers that owns a portion of the 15,000 acres of banked 

 meadow. On this he pastures his stock in summer, from which he 

 gets those huge stacks of hay that are thrown out so profusely to his 

 stock in winter. 



These banked meadows are the deltas of the Lower Delaware ; the 

 accimiulated deposits since the creation, formerly covered by water 

 at high tide, but all mud at low water. Like the deltas of the Lower 

 Mississippi, or the lands redeemed from the sea in the Xetherlands, 

 they are inexhaustibly fertile. They are not like the banks in which 

 Mr. Greeley keeps his accounts ; you may draw and draw upon them 

 without replenisiiing, probably as long as there shall be " seed-time and 

 harvest.-' 



