214 
ROTATION OF CROPS. 
select a series of crops more exhausting than the foregoing ; and on the principle upon which 
rotations are recommended, it is difficult to defend it from objections of a serious kind. The 
same may be said of another rotation, referred to in the same paper, viz ; manure, roots, oats with 
clover, beans, wheat. It is rather remarkable that beans and wheat are cultivated as they are, for 
beans, both in its foliage and fruit or seed, contains a large amount of phosphates. Bean leaves 
and stems are highly valuable, as a fodder for sheep ; and the bean itself is unequalled by any 
seed for the amount of muscle and force which it imparts to the system. It seems plain, then, if 
the foregoing remarks are true, that so far as ultimate exhaustion of the soil is concerned, there 
can be but slender grounds of choice between cultivating one of those crops, for the same num¬ 
ber of years, and a rotation of the many proposed. There must be other advantages in the ro¬ 
tation than those which concern the fertility of the soil, or else the advantages of such a rotation 
must be questioned. If rotation, then, is of so much consequence, and if those proposed are 
objectionable, what rotation will be an improvement upon them 1 An answer to this question 
has been attempted more than once ; and there are inherent difficulties in it, arising from the 
fact that all the products of human industry which are derived from the soil, are expensive : 
all the cereals and grasses, with the clovers, root crops and herbage crops, are rich either in 
phosphates or the alkalies, or both ; and as some portions of the crops are to be removed and 
sold at a distance, exhaustion necessarily follows. In the cultivation of sugar cane it is cus 
tomary to return a large proportion of the stalk to the soil, after employing it for fire wood. 
The ability to restore to the soil a portion of the crop, in the form of ash, as in the sugar cane, 
or in straw, as in the cereals, becomes an important matter, and is not lost sight of by the 
farmers of New-York, or the southern planter. Now, although much has been said and written 
on rotation, and the exact order in which crops should succeed each other, I think it very 
doubtful whether any one which has been proposed is free from serious objections ; and I think 
it will be clear, on reflection, that there is no rotation which can become general, or which 
may be followed with equal success in different parts of New-York, much less in the United 
States. A rotation which may be regarded as suitable in England, will not, on that account, 
succeed here. In the first place, crops are raised for profit, and in the second place, there is 
no profitable crop that is not exhausting ; and no fanner will be deterred from raising a given 
crop on account of its effects on the soil, provided only it remunerates him better than any 
other production. Then again, that crop which is profitable near a city or village, is not one 
which will pay in the country ; location and market must, therefore, govern the husbandry of 
a country to a great extent. When it is once fully felt that land refuses to yield its increase, 
because an important element has been removed by cultivation; that it is not owing to any 
injurious substance imparted to the soil by the crop itself; that the whole difficulty, so far as 
soil is concerned, in raising perpetually any given crop, resolves itself into exhaustion, and 
nothing else, then the farmers will not be troubled in devising a rotation for the sake of a rota¬ 
tion. The principle which will govern him will be profit. But as profit forbids a course of 
husbandry which will end in exhaustion of the soil, or in the growth of weeds, that plan will 
be pursued with due regard to the preservation of the soil in a healthy condition ; and hence, 
