136 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Mat, 
The Agricultural Bureau—Who Shall be 
at the Head of it ? 
Letters from Washington assure us that the 
House Bill for the Establishment of an Agri¬ 
cultural Bureau, will certainly be passed in the 
Senate and become a law. We were at first in¬ 
clined to favor its passage, even with its objec¬ 
tionable features. But we can not do so, and 
for this reason. Within the last three weeks we 
have received ever so many letters from parties 
(and their friends), who are lobbying the bill 
through, because each one of these parties has a 
personal interest in the matter—each one is ex¬ 
pecting to be placed at the head of it with the 
comfortable salary of$3,000ayear. Some ofthem 
are our personal friends, good, honest men, too; 
and we especially dislike to forfeit the good will 
of those' who privately promise that the Agri¬ 
culturist shall lose nothing if it will only advo¬ 
cate their individual claims. How can we do so 
for each, if the interests of agriculture compel us 
to say frankly that we do not believe one of the 
applicants now seeking the appointment of Com¬ 
missioner of the proposed Agricultural Bureau 
would, if successful, be “ the right man in the 
right place ?” 
If the proposed Department, or Bureau of Ag¬ 
riculture, as a part of the Government of the 
country, is to amount to any thing, it must have 
at its head a man of no less breadth of mind and 
capability, than is required for the other De¬ 
partments of the Government—added to which 
he should have the experience of a large cultiva¬ 
tor. The trouble in the past has been, that 
the sub-Secretaries in the Department of the 
Patent Office allotted to agriculture, have not 
been first or second class men, but mainly fif¬ 
teenth rate inefficient fellows—such as D. J. 
Browne, Lee, Clemsen, etc. We could name a 
dozen men among the reporters of the city press, 
two dozen or more, city or country editors, a 
hundred country-bred clerks in our city stores, 
and two hundred officers of our Agricultural 
Societies, any one of whom would be better fitted 
to conduct the Department of Agriculture than 
several of those who have had most to do with 
that interest in Washington for half a dozen 
3 r ears past. We will guarantee to send out from 
the Agriculturist Office at leastfive men who would 
conduct the seed distribution, and other matters, 
in the wing of the Patent Office, and collect and 
diffuse more valuable statistics, and even get up 
a more useful “ Annual Report ” than anything 
that has emanated from Washington, since 
Commissioner Ellsworth’s day. 
But we want, farmers want, the country wants 
at the head of the proposed Agricultural Bureau 
some such man as H. P. Banks, for example, 
who has had not only large experience as a cul¬ 
tivator, but has shown himself to possess admin¬ 
istrative talent, a broad comprehensive mind ca¬ 
pable of looking over the whole country, to take 
in at a glance the needs of agriculture, and the fa¬ 
cilities for supplying those necessities. A fourth 
rate clerk can attend to the details, but eminent 
ability is required to direct what is wanted. 
Such men are to be found, and our great agri¬ 
cultural interests need their efforts, and afford 
abundant scope for their talents. There are 
many more men fitted to be governors of States, 
than there are to be placed at the head of a Bu¬ 
reau of Agriculture, in the Government of these 
United States—pre-eminently the greatest agri¬ 
cultural country of the world. We hope the 
President, or whoever may have the appointing 
power—if the proposed. Department be organ¬ 
ized—will weigh the matter well, before filling 
so important an office. It is not our province 
to nominate candidates. We named Mr. Banks 
merely as an illustration of the kind of talent 
wanted. We see that the Saratoga Press, in a 
recent editorial, and two or three other journals, 
nominate the writer of this, for “ Chief of the 
new Agricultural Bureau.” With thanks for 
the friendly spirit shown, we beg most respec- 
fully to decline any such nomination—even on 
the intimation that “ if we dont take the office, 
somebody less well qualified will.” We don’t 
begin to possess the ability of the man whom 
we would have placed at the head of such a 
Department, and if we were vain enough to sus¬ 
pect we had, our present position is abundantly 
satisfactory for our ambition, and is only second 
in importance to an agricultural Bureau. Every 
day we feel our own incompetency, and would 
be happy to call to our aid some one who can 
make the Agriculturist even a better promoter 
of the agricultural interests of the country than 
it now is. We would gladly surrender the edi¬ 
torial pen entirely to more competent hands, 
and devote ourself wholly to the necessary 
pecuniary or publishing interest—as a “ hewer 
of wood and drawer of water.” 
We trust the views set forth above will be a 
sufficient answer to those who have done us the 
honor to solicit the influence of this journal in 
aiding them to secure a place at the head of the 
Agricultural Bureau—proposed. We care not 
who secures the office, if he be an honest man, 
and fully competent to perform its duties. 
Rotation of Crops. 
There are various arguments for the practice 
of raising different kinds of crops in succession 
upon the same piece of land, now common in 
the older parts of this country. These argu¬ 
ments are based both upon practice and theory; 
the former being to most of us the more conclu¬ 
sive. Long ago it was discovered that much 
land would bear a good crop of grain only once 
in two or three years without manure, and that 
to secure a crop, it was necessary to plow or 
otherwise work over the land in the mean time. 
This system of fallowing necessarily left the 
land at least half the time with no crop upon it, 
and the farmer depended for a crop upon the de¬ 
compositions wrought in the soil by the action 
of the elements, aided by his own labor in over¬ 
turning and pulverizing it. When it was dis¬ 
covered that a crop of roots could be raised be¬ 
tween the crops of grain, and the effect of fal¬ 
lowing still be realized, the roots were regarded 
as clear gain, and the whole system of farm¬ 
ing was changed. How, on all those lands 
where farmers are obliged to be economical of 
fertility, some system of alternation or variation, 
if not a proper rotation of crops, is employed. 
It is enough for most farmers to know by ex¬ 
perience that—whether they depend on the fer¬ 
tility of the soil alone, on the green manure 
which they plow in, or on the dung of cattle 
which they apply—they realize by this means a 
much better return for the time, labor, and 
available fertility expended. 
Some crops seem very rapidly to exhaust fer¬ 
tility so far as they alone are concerned; and the 
theory of many is, that this exhaustion results 
from their appropriating the most available sup¬ 
plies of certain substances essential to their 
growth. Other crops either use less of these 
substances, or have the ability to collect them 
more easily. Thus turnips, though they remove 
from the soil a comparatively small quantity of 
the phosphates, yet an abundant supply in a 
very available form'promotes their growth and 
increases the yield, in an entirely disproportion¬ 
ate degree.* And wheat and other small grains 
demand a proportion of available nitrogen 
greater than other crops which remove more 
from the field. The benefit of an alternation or 
rotation of crops being a recognized fact, and it 
being also true that under certain ill-judged 
modes of farming land became unaccountably 
sick of certain crops which before grew well, 
M. Decandolle proposed a theory which met the 
case, and was almost universally received. It 
was that the roots of the crops throw off, or ex¬ 
crete substances in the soil (which is true), and 
that these substances while injurious to the plant 
which throws them off, are food for other kinds 
of plants, (which, at least to any appreciable ex¬ 
tent, is not true.) Still it very simply and fully 
accounted for the facts as then known.—Almost 
all plants have their natural enemies, parasitic 
plants, like smut, rust, etc., or insects which live 
upon them—and when a plant grows several 
years in the same soil, it becomes more and 
more a prey to these, and perhaps subject 
to other diseases having similar but not so ob¬ 
vious causes. In this view of the subject the 
excretory theory may find legitimate application. 
When the full value of manure is realized, 
practice has demonstrated that crops must fol¬ 
low each other in the order of their dissimilari¬ 
ty—for instance: grain, roots, grass, leguminous 
plants (peas, beans, clover seed, etc.); oil plants, 
(colza, rape, poppy, flax seed, etc.); and commer¬ 
cial plants raised for the plant itself (tobacco, 
hemp, flax, madder and other dye-stuffs, etc.) 
The longer the time intervening between two 
crops of the same plant, the better. Rotations are 
usually short in this country, and the land ma¬ 
nured but once. In other countries, rotations 
continued through ten or twelve years are not 
uncommon. One reason for this is, that in our 
market there is not a demand for so many pro¬ 
ducts, though this evil is rapidly diminishing. 
Different soils and different markets make differ¬ 
ent crops profitable. The culture of Indian 
corn in this country is so different from the oth¬ 
er cereals, that it is classed by itself, or with po¬ 
tatoes, though potatoes will not bear the ma¬ 
nure that corn will, and in this respect, tobacco 
and corn are similar, and may occupy similar 
places in a rotation. Where the clover and 
wheat alternation is practiced, good crops may 
be raised several years without manure; thus: 
wheat on clover sod plastered and seeded 
down with clover; the next year clover fed or 
cut; third year clover pastured in Spring, and 
clover sod turned under and wheat sowed. Some 
land improves for a while under this system, 
but there is danger of its becoming clover sick, 
and refusing both crops. Another ill-judged ro¬ 
tation is: corn on sod with manure, oats, wheat 
with bone-dust, superphosphate or guano ; and 
finally grass. Corn with manure, oats ; clover, 
wheat, grass, is much better. Corn or tobacco, 
roots, spring grain, clover, wheat, grass, is still 
better, and for many parts of the country a good 
practical rotation. The wheat will be benefited 
by a special manuring in many cases, and the 
roots may receive the bulk of the manure 
plowed in in the Fall after the corn is taken off, 
—the corn being made to depend in a great mea¬ 
sure on the sod turned in. W. 
* It may be considered still an open question, whether 
the beneficial results arising from the use of soluble phos 
phatic manures are due to the direct absorption of phos¬ 
phoric acid as plant food, or whether this acid does not 
act mainly as a powerful absorber and retainer of am¬ 
monia. So also it may be questioned, whether less nf the 
costly phosphoric acid, and more of the cheaper sulphuric 
acid may not be productive of equally good results. O. J. 
