Proceedings of the Farmers* Club. 497 



the Dismal Swamp of ISTorth Carolina. Much of it had been cropped 

 annually with wheat or corn for more than fifty years. The ordinary 

 teams for plowing were a pair of mules. 



If the crops fail lime is used,; but I never heard of deep plowing, 

 although there seems no limit to the depth of vegetable mold. 



The great art of agriculture is advancing rapidly. The genius of 

 the inventor and the skill of the mechanic are making us implements 

 and machinery to economize labor. 



The chemists, by analysis, are showing us what plants and fertili- 

 zers are made of, and how the one should be fed to the other. 



But to the practical farmer, who has had long experience, and who 

 reads and thinks, we are most indebted for the solid advancement of 

 the art. 



When Joshua Thompson gathers 100 bushels of shelled corn from 

 an acre of ground, by comparatively shallow plowing, it signifies 

 something. 



When George Abbott says he plows six inches deep to make 

 room for his superabundance of barn-yard manure, we infer that if 

 lie had less he would plow shallower. 



When David Pettit tells us he has tried subsoiling and abandoned 

 it, it has meaning. 



When I am told by such men, that they have seen rank crops of 

 clover grow on poor land by a top dressing of marl in the spring, it 

 proves that this tap-rooted plant does not require the ground loos- 

 ened down four feet deep because that tap-root has been found to go- 

 to that depth. 



Plaster sown on the growing clover in May has been known to- 

 produce an astonishing crop. Such fertilizing cannot even reach 

 the lateral roots. 



A top dressing of ashes will often cause a crop of white clover to 

 spring up like magic. 



When I see seventy corn-fields, in one day's ride, that will average 

 more than seventy bushels of shelled corn to the acre, and not a 

 bushel of weeds in any of them, the inference is that clean cultivation 

 has something to do with the crop. 



At the conclusion of Dr. Trimble's paper, the club, upon motion 

 of Mr. A. S. Fuller, amended by Mr. P. T. Quinn, voted to make 

 the subject in hand the special order at half past one next week, 

 and that all shallow plowing farmers shall be heard first, and after 

 them the deep tillers, and then shallow ones again. . 



[Inst.] 32 



