230 Designs for laying out 



The ejected matters, on being thrown into that great laboratory 

 of vegetable food, the soil, must immediately become again 

 blended, through the medium of water, with the vegetable food 

 there deposited, and in nearly similar proportions as at first ; 

 and, consequently, may be as innoxious to the plant the second 

 time as they were the first. But I have stronger reasons to offer. 

 In the great secondary formation of West New York there are 

 hundreds, and, I believe, thousands, of instances, where a wheat 

 crop has been taken from the same field, ten, fifteen, and twenty 

 years in succession, and in one instance at least twenty-two 

 years, without any manifest diminution of product. Upon some 

 of the alluvial flats of the Genessee, Sciota, and other western 

 rivers, Indian corn has been grown twenty and thirty years in 

 succession ; and before their settlement by the whites, it was 

 grown time out of mind, it is believed, by the natives. These 

 facts are wholly irreconcilable with the proposition of M. Macaire. 

 I apprehend it is the matters which plants retain, and which are 

 carried from the field, and not those which they throw off, and 

 are left in the soil, that unfit it for a repetition of the same 

 crop ; that it is the nsoant of specific food, which has been dimi- 

 nished or exhausted by the first crop, and not the presence of 

 noxious matters, that renders a resort to alternation expedient 

 and beneficial ; and that it is the presence of the specific food 

 of the wheat and Indian corn in the districts I have named, in 

 yet unexhausted quantities, which has allowed these crops to be 

 taken during so many successive years. If any entire crop is 

 left to decay undisturbed where it grows, and its substance is 

 permitted to become again blended with the soil, fertility will be 

 increased, and the same species may be grown every year, with 

 increasing luxuriance. This is demonsti'ated in our prairies, 

 and in our forests, where the same perennials and annuals ai*e 

 found constantly occupying the soil. It is proved, also, by the 

 annual growth of the same weeds upon some of our badly 

 managed farms, where annuals are permitted to occupy patches 

 undisturbed, and to return again to the soil from which they 

 have sprung. 



Albany, New YorJc, Ja7i. 26. 1836. 



Art. III. A Series of Designs Jor laying out Suburban Gardens and 

 Grounds, from One Perch to several Acres in Extent. By Mr. T. 

 RuTGER. Design 9. For laying out a Place of Twenty Perches (an 

 Eighth of an Acre) in Extent. Design 10. For laying out a Place 

 containing a Quarter of an Acre. 



Having gone through what may be considered as the first part 

 of the series of designs for suburban gardens, which consists 



