Designed to improve all Classes interested in Soil Culture. 
AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN -W,. 
ORANGE JUDD, A. M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
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,vol. xvil-No. 2 .] NEW-YORK, FEBRUARY, 1858. [new series_No. 133 . 
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Entered in 1858, in Southern District of New-York. 
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ORANGE JUDD, Proprietor. 
February- 
“ What prodigies can power divine perform 
More grand than it produces year by year— 
And all in sight,of inattentive man. 
Familiar with the effect, we slight the cause. 
And in the constancy of Nature’s course, 
The regular return of genial months, 
And renovation of a faded world, 
See naught to wonder at.” Cowper. 
There is much not only to wonder at, but to in¬ 
struct us, in the methods, by which Nature reno¬ 
vates a faded world. By a constant succession 
of changes the face of the earth is made con¬ 
tinually attractive. The rotation, which the 
Divine mind has impressed upon all the planet 3 
of our system, is carried out in all the details of 
animal and vegetable life, upon the face of the 
globe. We have a constant succession of sea¬ 
sons, each having its own peculiarities, and pre¬ 
paring the way for its successor, in the circling 
year. Each month has its strongly marked fea¬ 
tures, and its appropriate work, by the forces of 
Nature. The Winter is, by no means, a season 
lost to the purposes of vegetable growth, though 
all plants are apparently struck with paralysis, 
and no changes visible to the eye are going for¬ 
ward. The agencies of frost and water are now 
active in field and forest, disintegrating both the 
organic, and the inorganic materials of the soil. 
The frost breaks down rough hard clods into a 
finer tilth than the plow and the harrow can ever 
secure. 
In the forest, a constant succession of trees and 
plants are kept up However bountifully the wal¬ 
nut may shed its nuts, they are not to reproduce 
their kind upon the same soil of the parent tree. 
They will be borne down the stream by the wa¬ 
ters, or transported by squirrels to a new locality, 
to take possession and replace the oak, the chest¬ 
nut, or some other forest tree. We rarely find 
an extirpated forest, left to itself, replaced by the 
same varieties of trees. Hard wood trees are 
often succeded by pines or firs, and these ever¬ 
greens are followed by deciduous trees. 
The same law of rotation is observed in the 
smaller plants and grasses. 
Tn the field where wild strawberries flourish 
in the greatest abundance, after a few years, few 
if any will be found. The grasses which before 
were scanty have entirely supplanted them. In 
salt marshes, the black grass, which is most co¬ 
veted for food, is gradually driven out by the 
onion grass, and other coarse varieties. Shut off 
the sea water, and drain these marshes, and a 
new order of vegetation starts into being as if by 
magic. Shore weeds come in, and have their 
brief day, then mosses, dandelions, dock, and 
thistles, to be supplanted in their turn by up¬ 
land grasses, clover, herds, and red top. 
ROTATION OF CROPS. 
Nature then points the husbandman to a rota¬ 
tion of crops, as one of the necessities of his call¬ 
ing. It was not until about a century ago, that 
this subject received much attention. If shifts 
in the crops were made, it was not with any un¬ 
derstanding of the philosophy of the change. The 
fact was forced upon the attention of all, that land 
continually kept in grass, gradually became bar¬ 
ren arid unprofitable. Plowingand manuring was 
a remedy, and hoed crops, either roots or grain, 
would pay for the labor and manure necessary to 
fit the land for grass again. Yet there was a 
reason for this rotation, aside from the benefit of 
stirring the soil and adding new elements to its 
fertility. Arthur Young, an eminent English 
writer upon agriculture, was among the first to 
point out the advantages of a good succession of 
crops. He claimed, that whenever very good or 
very bad husbandry is found on arable land, it is 
more the result of a right or wrong arrangement 
of the crops, than of any other circumstance; 
that no district is well cultivated under bad rota¬ 
tions, while it is extremely rare to find one badly 
cultivated under such as are good. It is, perhaps, 
owing as much to his labor, as that of any other 
one man, that England now has a well defined 
system of cropping her farms. The given routine 
fora certain variety of soil is followed with great 
uniformity, and is rarely departed from, except 
for the purpose of experiment. The experience 
of her best farmers has determined this rotation, 
and it is found to be more profitable than any 
other arrangement of the crops. 
The philosophy of this rotation is explained hy 
two theories. The first or excretory theory ac¬ 
counts for the phenomena thus : One crop does 
better where it follows another, because every 
plant leaves in the soil certain excretory matters, 
that are not friendly to other plants of its own 
species ; while they are appropriate food for differ¬ 
ent plants. Plants seem endowed with something 
of the same instinct as animals, and avoid their own 
fcecesorthedead matter thrown from their own bark 
and roots Until these are decomposed, and remov¬ 
ed from the earth by other plants, or by the gradual 
effects of decomposition, the same crop cannot he 
advantageously planted in the same soil. Hence 
in raising bulbous flowers, like the hyacinth which 
grows in water, there must be a frequent change 
of the water, in order to remove the excretory 
matter thrown off from the roots of the plant. 
This same foul water, however, is found to be a 
good stimulant to other kinds of plants, and will 
sometimes make them flourish even better than 
pure water. It is also a well known fact, that 
nurserymen find it difficult to make a second crop 
nl young apple trees grow, where they have been 
grown before. Even with heavy manuring they 
find it better policy to take a piece of ground that 
has been occupied with some other crop. If there 
are exceptions to the advantage of rotation, as 
there seems to be, in the case of the onion, and 
some other garden crops, it is in case of gross 
feeders, where a great deal of manure is used, 
which, by its fermentation in the soil, decomposes 
the excretory matter of the crops of the preceding 
season. The onion crop is almost always heavily 
manured, and dressed with ashes, which furnish 
lime and potash, two powerful alkalies, that act 
with great rapidity upon all vegetable fiber. So 
much for this theory. 
The second theory may be stated thus : Each 
plant absorbs some essential constituent from the 
soil, which, in time, becomes exhausted. If, for 
instance, the wheat plant demands phosphate ol 
lime, and there is but a small quantity in the soil, 
it fails to be perfectly developed when it cannot 
find a full supply of this mineral. It must be re¬ 
stored by the application of manure or by a fal¬ 
low, or the growth of some other crop that does 
not require much phosphate of lime for its per¬ 
fect developement. Another example is frequent¬ 
ly given of root crops, which usually contain con¬ 
siderable quantities of alkalies. This theory sup¬ 
poses a root crop to exhaust the ready formed 
alkalies in a soil, and that alkaline manures must 
be added or a change of crops be made, while a 
further disentegration of the soil is setting at 
liberty new supplies of alkalies. 
We think there is some truth in both of the 
theories as above stated, but that neithsr of them, 
and especially not the second one, will fully ac¬ 
count for the advantages of a rotation 
It is probably the exhaustion of the organic or 
vegetable matters in the soil, more by one crop 
than by another, that chiefly has to do with the 
benefit of a change of crops. The main points in 
these theories were discussed in our manure ar¬ 
ticles in last volume. 
A rotation is not only demanded for the sake of 
furnishing a new pasture ground for the roots of 
plants, but to prevent the increase of predatory 
grubs and insects. The instinct of these won¬ 
derful creatures leads them to deposit their eggs 
where the young, when hatched, will find their 
