THE CULTIVATOR. 
Memorandum. —February 20. No snow. Thermometer 55 de¬ 
grees in shade. Blue birds appear. Sowed spring wheat and gar¬ 
den peas. 
Plaster. —It is a practice with some farmers, and we venture to 
recommend it to all, to sow plaster of Paris on their grass grounds 
in March. 
To destroy the Weevil ingrain. —Soak linen cloths in water, wring 
them, and cover your grain with them : in two hours time you will 
find all the weevils upon the cloth, which must be carefully gather¬ 
ed off, that none of the insects may escape, and then immersed in 
water to destroy them.— Dom. Ency. 
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 
Delivered before the New- York State Agricultural Society, at the An¬ 
nual Meeting, February 12, 1834. 
We have associated, gentlemen, to increase the pleasures and 
profits of rural labor—to enlarge the sphere of -useful knowledge— 
and, by concentrating our energies, to give to them greater effect 
in advancing the public good. In no country does the agricultural 
bear so great a proportion to the whole population as in this. In 
England, one-third of the inhabitants only are employed in husband¬ 
ry ; In France, two-thirds ; in Italy, a little more than three-fourths* 
—while, in the United States, the agricultural portion probably ex¬ 
ceeds five-sixths. And in no country does the agricultural popula¬ 
tion exercise such a controlling political power, contribute so much 
to the wealth, or tend so strongly to give an impress to the charac¬ 
ter of a nation, as in the United States. Hence it may be truly 
said of us, that our agriculture is our nursing mother, which nurtures, 
and gives growth, and wealth, and character to our country. It may 
be regarded as the great wheel which moves all the machinery of 
society, and that whatever gives to this a new impulse or energy, 
communicates a corresponding impetus to the thousand minor wheels 
of interest which it propels and regulates. Knowing no party, and 
confined to no sect, its benefits and its blessings, like the dews of 
Heaven, fell upon all. Identified, then, as agriculture is, with the 
interests of every department in society, it becomes our profession, 
in particular, to endeavor to enlighten its labors, to remedy its de¬ 
fects, and to accelerate its improvement. 
Of the multitude of objects which present themselves as worthy 
of our consideration, I can only embrace a few of the most promi¬ 
nent ones in the subject matter of this address. I shall particularly 
invite your attention to 
The economy and application of manures; 
The improvement of farm implements and machines ; 
The advantages of draining; 
The defects which exist in the present mode of managing our hop 
and barley crops ; 
The division of labor ; 
The introduction of new articles of culture ; and 
To some illustration of the comparative profits of good and bad 
husbandry. 
Manures. —If we consider tl.at all animal and vegetable substan¬ 
ces are susceptible of being converted into manure, or food for farm 
crops, and reflect upon the great quantity of these which are wasted 
upon a farm; and if we add to these considerations the fact, now 
well established by chemical experiment, that yard dung loses a large 
portion of its fertilizing properties, in the gases which escape, where 
fermentation is suffered to exhaust its powers upon it in a mass, we 
may be able to appreciate, in some measure, the great defects which 
exist in our general management of this all-important material.— 
Manures are a principal source of fertility. They are to our crops 
what hay and forage are to our cattle—the food which is to nourish 
and perfect their growth. Continual cropping, without manure, as 
certainly exhausts land of its fertility, as constant draining from a 
cistern that is never replenished exhausts the water which it con¬ 
tains. The practice of some, who, disregarding one of the soundest 
rules of farming, continue to crop without manuring, till the soil will 
no longer yield a return to pay for the labor, is upon a par with that 
of the man who undertook to teach his horse to live without food: 
just as the experiment was about to succeed, the horse died. A 
considerable portion of the lands in Virginia and Maryland, which 
were originally fertile, have in this way been judiciously exhausted, 
* Babbage on the Economy of Machinery. 
7 
and thrown into commons as not worth enclosing. I lately received 
a letter from a young gentleman in the former state, soliciting my 
advice as to the means best adapted to restore fertility to two worn 
out farms, which had recently come into his possession, and which 
he stated, would no longer produce clover. It is much easier to 
prevent sterility than to cure it, on the same principle that it is ea¬ 
sier to keep a cow in flesh when she is so than to restore her to flesh 
! after she has become wretchedly lean. In some soils, to which na¬ 
ture has been uncommonly bountiful in imparting the means of fer¬ 
tility, as in many of our river alluvions, the deterioration is slow and 
imperceptible ; yet it nevertheless goes on even there. But in or¬ 
dinary, and particularly in the lighter soils, the profits of husbandry 
depend, in an eminent degree, upon the faithful application of all the 
manure which a farm can be made to produce. 
In regard to the question,—in what condition are manures most 
economically applied ?—1 am sensible that a difference of opinion 
exists, many contending, even on philosophical grounds, that it is 
most wise to apply them after they have undergone fermentation. 
If the question was merely, whether a load of fermented or unfer¬ 
mented dung is of the greatest intrinsic value, in ordinary cases the 
former would be entitled to the preference, because it contains the 
greatest quantity of vegetable food. But the correct way to state 
the question would be this : WiWfive loads of rotted manure impart 
greater fertility than ten loads that are unrotted : The numbers 
ought rather to be five and fifteen—for I think common dung suffers 
a dimunition of two-thirds, instead of one half, in volume, by a tho¬ 
rough process of rotting.* It will assist in determining the question, 
if we ascertain what the manure parts with during fermentation, for 
it evidently loses much in weight as well as in bulk, and whether 
this lost matter would, if buried in the soil, have afforded food to the 
crop. For if it possessed no fertilizing property, the sooner it is got 
rid of the better, and we save the expense of transporting it to the 
field. But if it really consists of prepared or digested food, fitted 
for the organs and wants of plants, it is truly improvident to have it 
wasted and lost for all useful purposes. The latter is really the 
case.f The matter which escapes in fermentation is vegetable 
matter in a gaseous form, fitted by natural process, like chyle in the 
animal stomach, to enter into and become a constituent in a new 
generation of plants. It is principally carbonic acid gas, the ali¬ 
ment of vegetables and the true staff of vegetable life. It has been 
vegetable matter, and will become vegetable matter again. With¬ 
out resorling to chemical proofs or authorities to prove this, I will 
suggest a mode by which the matter can be satisfactorily settled. 
Let any farmer, in the spring, before yard manure ferments, put 
twenty-five loads in a pile to rot, and take another twenty-five loads 
to the field where he intends to plant his corn, spread it upon one 
acre, plough it well under, harrow the ground, and plant his seed. 
Let him plant another acre of corn along side this, without manure. 
As soon as the corn is harvested, carry on and spread the twenty- 
five loads of prepared or rotted manure left in the yard, or what re¬ 
mains of it, upon the acre not manured for corn, and sow both pie¬ 
ces to wheat. Unless my observation and practice have deceived 
me, he will find the result of the experiment to be this :—the acre 
dressed with long manure will yield the most wheat, because the 
manure has been less exhausted in the process of summer rotting, 
and for the reason, that in cultivating the corn, it has become better 
incorporated with the soil— and it will, besides, have increased the corn 
crop some twenty or thirty bushels, in consequence of the gases upon 
which the crop here fed and thrived, but which in the yard were dissi¬ 
pated by the winds and lost. 
Plants, like animals, require different modifications of food. In 
general, the plants which afford large stocks or roots, as corn, pota¬ 
toes, turnips and clover, thrive best on the gases which are given off 
from dung in the process of fermentation—while those exclusively 
* During the violent fermentation which is necessary for reducing farm-yard 
manure to the state in which it is called short muck , not only a large quantity 
of fluid, but of gaseous matter is lost; so much so that the dung is reduced 
one-half or two-lhirds in weight, and the principle elastic matter disengaged is 
carbonic acid, with some ammonia; and both these, if retained by the mois- 
lure in the soil, as has been stated before, are capable of becoming a useful 
nourishment for plants.— Davy. 
t As soon as dung begins to decompose or rot, it throws off its volatile parts, 
which are the most valuable and most efficient. Dung which has fermented 
so as to become a mere soft cohesive mass, has generally lost from one-third to 
one-half of its most useful constituent elements. It evidently should be ap¬ 
plied as soon as fermentation begins, that it may exert its full action upon the 
plant, and lose none of its nutritive powers.— Davy. 
