132 MY FARM, 



purposes, upon lands which need recuperation. It is, 

 in fact, a succession of two fallow crops, and with 

 proper culture and dressings, will insure accumulat- 

 ing fertility. 



Such a simple course of green cropping is, more- 

 over, admirably adapted to the system of soiling, 

 which, upon all light and smooth lands, adapted to 

 dairy purposes, in the neighborhood of towns, must 

 sooner or later become the prevailing method ; and this, 

 because it is economic, because it is sure, and be- 

 cause it supplies fourfold more of enriching material 

 than belongs to any other system. I am not writing 

 a didactic book, or offering any challenge to the 

 agricultural critics (who, I am afraid, are as full of 

 their little jealousies as the literary critics), else I 

 would devote a full chapter to this theory of soiling, 

 and press strongly what I believe to be its advan- 

 tages. 



The reader is spared this ; but he must pardon 

 me a little fanciful illustration of the subject, in 

 which I have sometimes indulged, and which may, 

 possibly, at a future day, become real. 



An Illustration of Soiling. 



FROM the eighty-acre flat below so like a car- 

 pet, with its checkered growth I order every 

 line of division fence to be removed ; the best of the 



