1874 ] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
55 
Let two young men begin life at twenty years 
of age with $10,000 each. If one can so man¬ 
age his property as to make it bring in ten per 
cent per annum, and can save and invest the 
whole, he will find himself worth when seventy 
years old $229,347.98. Let the other spend his 
income, and draw $500 a year on his principal, 
and his income will grow less and less every 
year, and at the end of ten years both principal 
and interest will be reduced one half. 
And so it is with farming. The plant-food 
in the soil is the farmer’s capital. That which 
lies dormant pays no interest. If land is left 
in a state of nature a small portion of the 
plant-food becomes annually available. It pays 
a low rate of interest. By cultivation, drain¬ 
ing, etc., the plant-food is more rapidly devel¬ 
oped, and a higher rate of interest may be 
obtained. 
“I see what you are driving at,” says the 
Deacon. “ You mean that if a farmer tills his 
land he will grow good crops, and that if he 
sells these crops he is spending his income and 
drawing more or less on his principal; but that 
if he plows under these crops or feeds them 
out on the farm he is adding to his capital, and 
gets annually a larger income. In other words, 
his farm is getting richer and richer and more 
and more productive. This is all very well. 
But a farmer has got to sell something to get 
money to live on.” 
“No one, Deacon, understands that better 
than I do. All 1 want to show is that if a man 
can invest his money at a good rate of interest, 
and add the income or even a part of it eveiy 
year to the principal, he will get rich; and it is 
equally true in regard to increasing the fertility 
and productiveness of the farm. Of course, I 
do not mean that a farmer should not sell any¬ 
thing ; but he should aim to sell such products 
as cafry off the least quantity of plant-food. 
For instance, butter carries off nothing of any 
value as manure; pork carries off scarcely any¬ 
thing ; animals of all kinds carry off compara¬ 
tively little ; wheat flour carries off very little 
—the plant-food of a crop of wheat is nearly 
all in the straw, chaff, and bran.” 
“ Your mangel-wurzels, judging from the way 
you have to manure them,” remarks the Dea¬ 
con, “ must require a great deal of plant-food.” 
“ True, Deacon, but you know that I do not 
sell them. They are fed to the sheep, cows, 
and pigs. The cows carry off nothing, for I 
sell nothing but the butter; the pigs carry off 
very little, and the sheep only from five to ten 
per cent. Taking leaves, roots, and bulbs, I do 
not think I lose, or need lose, over three per 
cent of the plant-food contained in the crop. 
And it is so with clover when fed out on the 
farm. Taking the roots into the account, I do 
not think we lose, when the croD is fed out on 
the farm and the manure carefully saved, over 
three per cent.” 
“ This is all very well,” said the Deacon. “ I 
know, of course, if a man has $10,000 to start 
with, and can invest it at compound interest 
and save it, he will become a rich man. But 
the trouble is to get the $10,000.” 
“I think you and I, Deacon, were worth 
$10,000 a piece when we were 20 years old.” 
“ I was not worth $1,000,” said the Deacon. 
“You mean,” I replied, “ that you had not 
one thousand dollars in cash. I don’t know 
that I had one hundred, and yet I think, if we 
had only known it, you and I were worth 
$10,000 each. There was that amount of capi¬ 
tal locked up in us. The truth is, very few 
people appreciate the real value of a healthy, 
active, industrious, energetic, sober, and intelli¬ 
gent man. Ten thousand dollars is a low price 
for him. If such a man can earn and invest at 
compound interest at ten per cent $1,000 a 
year, he will at the end of fifty years be worth 
$219,347.98.” 
Earning, saving, and investing money is the 
secret of getting rich. Developing the re¬ 
sources of our land, saving them, and so using 
them that they will produce crops that carry 
off' little plant-food is the secret of making our 
farms rich. We should not let our plant-food 
lie idle. We should keep it moving. To do 
this to the best -advantage is a great art and a 
profound science. In this country there is 
everything to stimulate us to advancement and 
improvement in agriculture. We own the 
land. If we can manage to secure a liveli¬ 
hood, and at the same time add to the fertility 
of our farms, we are in a fair way to get rich. 
And it is well worth while to make a decided 
effort iu this direction. 
There is a good prospect for good farmers. 
“I don’t know about that,” said a neighbor; 
“ if I could sell my farm I would quit the busi¬ 
ness. And if I can’t sell, I mean to rent it. 
As things are now, it takes all I can raise to 
pay my hired help.” 
“ That is because wages have been too high, 
and because you do not raise enough per acre. 
Wages will be lower and prices higher; and 
if you will farm better you will make money.” 
“I can’t see it in that light,” he replied. 
“ My wheat crop last year did not average five 
bushels per acre.” 
“ It was one of the worst seasons for wheat 
we have had for many years.” 
“We have too many bad seasons.” 
“ Well, what are you going to do about it ? 
It is no worse for you than for others. You 
should not go to sea expecting nothing but fair 
weather. You should prepare for storms. If 
you had had a good crop of wheat last year, 
and a good crop of barley, and a good crop of 
potatoes, and a good crop of choice apples, you 
would feel richer and jollier than Yanderbilt 
did last October when New York Central stock 
was down to 79J-, Western Union to 43J, and 
Lake Shore to 571, and few buyers at that. 
“ I do not say that a farmer can always be 
sure of good crops. I know that such is not 
the case. But if you would farm better—if 
you would drain your land, cultivate it thor¬ 
oughly, kill the weeds, make more and richer 
manure, you would stand a fair chance of get¬ 
ting good crops even m a bad season.” 
I wish Mr. Bliss, instead of offering prizes 
for the greatest yield of potatoes from a pound 
of seed had offered them for the largest yield 
per acre. The Deacon and I have just been 
reading the report of the committee. It is an 
interesting document. The Deacon seemed to 
think there must be some mistake. I told him 
I once knew a gardener who accidentally 
dropped a potato near a hot-bed, and it got 
covered with some manure and came up. It 
was not in the way, and so he hoed a little earth 
round it and let it grow. The ground was very 
rich, and the plant threw up a great many 
suckers. Every few days he pulled a little 
fresh earth to it, and before autumn he had a 
hill a good deal larger than a half barrel. He 
dug over a peck of potatoes from that one hill. 
“ What variety was it?” asked the Deacon. 
“ I did not ask. I saw the plant while it was 
growing, and have no doubt it produced an 
immense crop, but I attributed it to the manure 
and* the extra care. It never occurred to me 
that it proved that the variety was anything 
remarkable.” 
“I can believe a story of that kind,” says the 
Deacon. “ He got say 15 lbs. of potatoes from 
one potato, which may have weighed a pound. 
But in these premium-potato trials one man 
got 607 lbs. of potatoes from one pound of 
seed, and the lowest yield in the 20 different 
trials, by different people, in different parts of 
the countiy, was 250 lbs. from one pound of 
seed. We usually plant 6 bushels of seed per 
acre, and get about 120 bushels—or say 20 lbs. of 
potatoes to 1 lb. of seed. If we could grow 
250 lbs. from 1 lb. of seed, we should get 1,500 
bushels of potatoes per acre ; or if we could 
grow 607 lbs. from 1 lb. of seed, we should 
grow 3,642 bushels per acre.”—The Deacon 
laughed a quiet laugh and shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders, but made no further remarks. 
“The experiments, Deacon,” I replied, “are 
designed to show the wonderful vitality and 
productive powers of two new varieties of 
potatoes. We must take the facts for what 
they are worth. No farmer would think of 
planting potatoes as these were planted. We 
want to raise big crops per acre. These ex¬ 
perimenters tried how much they could get 
from a pound of seed. They cut their pound 
of seed into a hundred or so pieces, with never 
more than one eye iu a set, and frequently 
with less. They planted one of these hundred 
pieces in a hill. For anything that appears to 
the contrary, each hill may have occupied 
a square rod. If the hills were 6 feet apart, 
there would be 1,210 hills in an acre; and if the 
pound of seed planted 100 hills, as the report 
gives us to understand was sometimes the case, 
and the produce was 250 lbs., the crop would 
turn out about 50 bushels per acre. If it was 
607 lbs., which is the largest yield reported, it 
would be about 120 bushels per acre. The 
committee say 1 the hills were invariably placed 
a considerable distance apart, rarely less than 
three feet each way, and oftener further.’ If 
they were four feet apart, there would be 2,847 
hills in an acre, and if the hundred hills yielded 
250 lbs., the yield per acre would be 6,837^ lbs., 
or a little less than 114 bushels of 60 lbs.; and 
the largest yield reported would be (100 : 2,847 :: 
607 : 17,281), 17,281 lbs., or 288 bushels per 
acre.” 
“ That looks more reasonable,” says the Dea¬ 
con. “ I usually plant 3)- feet apart each way.” 
This would give 3,556 hills per acre, and the 
smallest yield reported would be about 143 
bushels per acre, and the largest about 360 
bushels per acre. 
I know very w'ell that this is not doing these 
varieties justice. They are doubtless capable 
of producing much larger crops if more and 
larger seed had been used. And as I said be¬ 
fore, I hope that hereafter the prizes will be 
offered for the largest yield per acre rather 
than for the largest production from the small¬ 
est quantity of seed. 
A Mew Method of Hurdling Sheep. 
Some time ago an English gentleman devised 
a method of irrigating grass land and a method 
of successfully feeding of sheep upon the enor¬ 
mous crops of grass he is thus enabled to grow. 
The mode of irrigation was described and illus¬ 
trated in the Agriculturist for December, 1873. 
It will interest many of our readers to know 
the manner in which this enterprising Eng- 
