■wjF,'V..^'(fT(7— I, 





IHE ILLINOIS FAKMUR. 



The Lemens were"among~dar mbst^In- 

 dustrioas and thrifty farmers. They made 

 large farms, prepared their wheat groaod 

 after the method of the Ogles, and raised 

 large crops of corn every year. No man- 

 ure was ever hauled on their plow-land. I 

 think their corn crop for half a century, 

 would average on the lowest estimate I can 

 honestly make, fifty bushels to the acre 

 each year. Often have I seen seventy five 

 bushels (or as Kentuckians reckon, fifteen 

 barrels,) gathered from each acre, after 

 continuous cultivation for fifteen or twenty 

 years. ' ' ' '. 



An observing and intelligent gentleman, 

 and an old farmer withal, has just given me 

 a fact from Jersey cunnty, where be resided 

 in 1851. He boarded with a Mr. Landou, 

 who settled on a prairie farm eighteen years 

 previous. His corn field had been broken 

 up from the. prairie the season before he 

 purchased it. It had produced successive 

 crops of corn each year, and the nineteenth 

 crop was then standing in the field, and 

 was estimated by the owner and my inform- 

 ant at seventy five bushels to the acre. This 

 is no tale of romance about Illinois prairies. 



I could give one hundred more individual 

 proofs of the capability of the prairie soil 

 of Illinois to last forever, under a correct 

 system of cultivation. 



I do not regret in discussing your ques- 

 tions, the very jmfavorable circumstances 

 under which our experiments have been 

 made. They add force to the evidence in 

 our favor. I add one more fact.. 



Within sight of my residence is a field of 

 sixteen acres, once a part of my farm, but 

 now owned by a neighbor. It was first 

 cultivated in 1840, and produced crops of 

 corn, wheat and oats, each successive year 

 Corn was repeatedly planted two years in 

 succession. It now has the seventh crop 

 of wheat on the ground in successive sea- 

 sons. Each harvest has been a gain on the 

 preceding one. Last harvest yielded more 

 bushels to the acre, and of a better quality, 

 than any preceding one. The straw has 

 been removed each year, and no manure 

 added. 



Though not in consecutive order, I think 

 I have answered your inquiries to a suffici- 

 ent extent. 



If other old pioneer farmers will furnish 

 you the result of their observatio'^s and ex- 

 periments, and those of their neighbors, yon 

 will be able to convince Kentucky emigrants 

 to this State of the fallacy of the specula- 

 tions of the distinguished Geologist of that 

 State, predicated on the analysis of his "as- 



sistapt," who obtained "sHicioris" soil [from 

 some sand ridge,] in 1856, "opposite Keo- 

 kuk,"— "and a few miles back from the 

 Mississippi river" — "from the newly upturn- 

 ed prairie.'' Respectfully yours, 



J. M. PECK. 



£dneation of Farmen. 



-r 



There is a capital weekly paper publish- 

 ed at Richview, in Southern Illinois. The 

 last number has a communication on the 

 subject of Education for Farmers. We cut 

 the following from that communication : 



"Law, Divinity and Medicine have each 

 their scores of colleges and seminaries; but 

 the Farmer, upon whom all are dependent 

 for subsistence, and who has more invested 

 in fences, alone, than the entire professions 

 in the country have invested in professions, 

 houses, lands and all, has not even one 

 school devoted to his exclusive interests. 

 It has been the commonly received opinion 

 that any one will do for a farmer. If a 

 boy is so dull that he cannot acquire a pro- 

 fessional education, and has no turn for a 

 mechanic, he is turned over to the farm as 

 the last resort- So the parapionnt interest 

 — that upon which every other depends, is 

 not deemed worthy of even a medium talent 

 of the country. Millions are lavished on 

 the military — Commerce calW for its mil- 

 lions — the professions have their millions — 

 but Agricnlcure can only get its thougands, 

 and that grudgingly given. /' 



Prussia has her system of Agricultural 

 schools and Universities. France has her's, 

 Scotland has her's; and even autocratic 

 Russia has them. Why should not we 

 profit by these examples? Is the thorough, 

 practical and scientific education of the 

 sovereigns of this Republic of less import- 

 ance than the education of the subjects of 

 the King of Prusia, the Emperor of France, 

 Queen Victoria, or the serfs of the Auto- 

 crat of all the Russians? Are our children 

 to go on digging blindly for a subsistence 

 in this age of magnetic telegraphs, loco- 

 motives, reapers and mowers and steam 

 plows? 



A few thousand dollars expended in an 

 Agricultural and Mechanical University 

 and experimental farm, would enable us to 

 t6st the great number of new seeds and 

 plants, and the thousand and one inventions 

 offered to the public year by year; and thus 

 save the cost of hundreds and thousands of 

 troublesome and expensive, and, in many 

 case*, useless experiments. 



