308 
ADVICE—FINDING FAULT. 
erally estimated value than any other lands in 
the country. Let me give another instance:—I 
have a small piece of heavy clay land near my 
residence, say three or four acres. Before I came 
into possession of it, some seven years ago, it had 
been miserably neglected. It produced nothing 
but moss, fivefingers, and strawberries, and was 
gnawed to the very dirt by horses and hogs. It 
had never been plowed , but was well situated to 
drain. I drew one or two slight ditches through 
it with the plow, scattered some hay chaff over 
it, spread over a tolerable coating of stable 
manure, and ever since it has annually yielded two 
to three tons of hay to the acre, growing so stout 
that I have usually had to cut it before it was prop¬ 
erly ripe, because of its lodging. 
I have been told that much of the fine grazing 
and extensive county of York, in England, as well 
as the principal parts of Durham and Northum¬ 
berland, adjoining, are heavy clays, (b) These 
are the great grazing counties, where the massive 
Short Horns are bred in the highest perfection; 
where thousands of Scotch cattle are annually 
grazed by the farmers; and the enormous dray- 
horse and Cleveland bays of England are produced. 
These, too, are the most northerly counties of Eng¬ 
land, and severe in their climates; yet their pas¬ 
tures are the most productive. And these heavy 
soils, I learn, were among the last to be appre¬ 
ciated ; but when their value was ascertained, they 
at once took rank in value with the most favored 
soils of the kingdom. Will it not be so with the 
clays of America? Let them be analyzed, their 
constituent parts ascertained, and I have little 
doubt, in process of time, with the aid of right 
cultivation, and cheap, yet friendly stimulants, 
these, to many disagreeable and repulsive soils, 
will become among the most desirable and profit¬ 
able in our country. L. F. Allen. 
Black Rock, June 26, 1844. 
(a) In addition to laying up the land in beds, 
with wide open furrows left between them, wher¬ 
ever any spot was so low as to retain the surface 
water, we made with the plow and road-scraper, 
an open ditch from such low spot to the main 
ravines running through the farm, for the purpose 
of drawing off the standing water. 
(b) Parts of these counties contain the stiffest 
clay soil we ever saw cultivated, except in the low 
grounds of Staffordshire. In our drier climate, we 
are confident no crop except hay could be profit¬ 
ably grown upon them ; and even in England, they 
pay much better to be kept constantly in grass. 
We examined lands of this description which had 
been kept in grass for centuries, and they were 
among the finest and most productive meadows 
that ever fell under our observation. It is consid¬ 
ered fatal to break them up for hoed or grain crops, 
and then re-seed; for it would take a century to 
restore the grass to its present state of perfection. 
We were shown different fields of grass which had 
been broken up and re-seeded, twenty, forty, sixty, 
and one hundred years ago, and the difference in 
the quality and product of grass in them was very 
great. The longer they remained in grass the 
better they grew. 
ADVICE—FINDING FAULT. 
It is the province of an old man to give advice 
and find fault. First, then, for advice : purchase 
no more land than you can make productive. 
Land doubles its first cost, on an average, once in 
nine to eleven years, by reckoning compound inter¬ 
est on first cost, together with taxes and other 
contingent expenses; so that if you pay $1.0 per 
acre for your farm, in ten years it will stand you in 
$20 ; in twenty years, $40; in thirty years, $80 ; 
and in forty years, $160 per acre ! I mean on that 
part of it which is unproductive. What an enor¬ 
mous sum! and how few think of it who are am¬ 
bitious to be the owners of large tracts of land 
without regarding the profits of its cultivation! 
It has been a principle laid down in British hus¬ 
bandry, in renting their estates, that “ no land be 
intrusted in the hands of men who have not capi¬ 
tal, skill, and industry, to cultivate them with profit 
to themselves and the community; nor to suffer 
any man, let his capital be what it may, to hold 
more land than he can personally superintend, so 
as to pay the requisite regard to the minutiae of 
cultivation.” But in this country, it may be said, 
it is far otherwise than in England ; land is bought 
here for the purpose of making an investment of 
money, looking for a profit on the rise of it. Un¬ 
derstand, however, that I am not giving advice to 
speculators, nor writing for their benefit. I have 
known $2 per acre paid for land forty years ago, 
and the land is now in the same family, and could, 
not be sold at this time for that price ; and many 
an instance have I known where families have 
been land-ridden all their lives, and kept poor by 
purchases made on speculation. But this has 
nothing to do with my present purpose; specula¬ 
tion has had, and always will have its votaries and 
victims. 
I now proceed to find a little fault. 
My business called me, a few days since, to visit 
a farm containing about 300 acres of cleared land. 
The barn was a noble one; in the yard of which 
was deposited, as near as I could judge, one thou¬ 
sand loads of well-rotted manure. While stand¬ 
ing and gazing with astonishment at such a sight, 
an ox-wagon with two large yoke of oxen attached, 
was driven through it into the barn, to take on a 
load of grain, the wheels sinking nearly to the 
hub, and the oxen up to their knees. I found, on 
inquiry, that this had been accumulating four 
years, and the heaps of manure all round the barn 
were in such piles as to make it difficult any 
longer to pass the dung from the stable through 
the windows. 
From the barn I passed over a considerable part 
of the farm, by which I was convinced that the 
land was not suffering for want of manure, for 
such clusters of burdocks I have never before seen ! 
The stalks at the root were nearly as large round 
as “ a piece of chalk” (and as much larger as my 
readers may please to imagine), while the branches 
were sufficiently spread to shelter calves and sheep; 
and the way their hair and wool were burred up 
was a caution! The noxious weeds in many 
places were equally prolific ; and then the way the 
sprouts were shooting up from the old stumps, 
would have cheered the heart of any one who is 
