TO IMPROVE THE SOIL AND THE MIND. 
New Series. ALBANY, JULY, 1852 . 
Formidable Losses. 
Every farmer who understands common arithmetic, 
may amuse and instruct himself with great advantage by 
a few interesting calculations. Successful tillage, as every 
one knows, consists in three important particulars,—name¬ 
ly, a good soil 5—its fertility made accessible •—and the 
entire monopoly of that fertility by the crop intended. 
A soil may consist of the most valuable ingredients, but 
if these are kept immersed in a subterranean basin of 
water, as in many undrained soils during every wet sea- 
son, they are as inaccessible to the plant, as if encased in 
walls of masonry. A hard, uncrumbled soil, is little bet¬ 
ter. But the greatest absurdity in farming, is to expend 
five or ten thousand dollars in the purchase of land, some 
hundreds more in fitting it for prolific crops, and then per¬ 
mitting one-fourth, one-third, or even one-half its costly 
value to be drawn out and destroyed by the growth of 
useless weeds! 
We have known men who were exceedingly jealous of 
iC their rights.” Rather than be defrauded of a half 
dollar, they would rush into a law-suit costing twenty 
times that sum. Rather than lose “ the best end of a 
bargain,” they would resort to a great many very incon¬ 
venient and troublesome expedients. Rather than sub¬ 
mit to furnish a neighbor’s lawless hog with a single meal 
of undug potatoes, they would incur perpetual resent¬ 
ment. But strange things have not yet come to an 
end, for these are the very same men that submit 
with most admirable patience to the invasions and waste 
of thousands of elder bushes and burdocks, tens of thou¬ 
sands of mulleins and horse-thistles, and a hundred thou¬ 
sand Canada thistles, and a million red-root plants. 
Now, the calculations we are about to propose, as 
above alluded to, are these: Let every land owner, whose 
fences are lined with a belt of elders, burdocks, and 
briars, ascertain by weighing, the precise amount of vege¬ 
table growth yielded by these three plants on*a square 
yard of land;—multiplying by 30 will give the weight on 
a square rod. Then let him make a fair estimate of the 
amount of land thus occupied along all the miles of his 
fence, and he may soon know how many tons of elder 
bushes, briars, and burdocks, his costly land grows in a 
year. It would of course be quite as well for him to 
have this growth in clover, timothy, or Indian corn—but 
before throwing the calculation aside, let him ask him¬ 
self, if he would not feel somewhat indignant should his 
neighbor’s cattle fall upon and devour an equal number 
of tons from his meadow or corn field? Now, cannot he 
Vol. IX.—No. 7 . 
contrive to get up a like amount of indignation against 
the weeds? The same kind of calculation may be ap¬ 
plied on the same farm, to the Canada thistles, horse- 
thistles, Johnswort, pig-weeds, mulleins, mustard, and 
fox-tail grass, which grow in various degrees of denseness 
broadcast over the fields. We cannot but think that on 
some farms it would present rather startling results. 
It would be an interesting inquiry, to look into the ac¬ 
tual losses sustained through the whole country by the 
growth of weeds. How many tons on an average are 
grown by each of the million farmers of the United 
States? Three—five-—or ten? If the former only, the 
aggregate crop would be enough to load a continued 
train of farm wagons three thousand miles long—or 
twenty thousand canal boats—or, more than ten times 
all the whale ships belonging to the country,—with this 
useless herbage. A single weed—the Red Root,—has 
been estimated to have occasioned greater loss in some 
counties than if every dwelling house had been consumed 
by fire. Is not the subject one worthy of some atten¬ 
tion? 
Now, there are two ways in which all this evil comes 
upon us. The first is by the increase of seeds—the 
second, the want of prompt destruction when once the 
evil has commenced. The increase by seeds, under fa¬ 
vorable circumstances, almost exceeds belief. We have 
counted the grains on a single moderate sized plant of 
chess, and found over three thousand. An equal increase 
the second year would produce nine millions; the third 
year, twenty-seven thousand millions; the fourth—but 
we will let some of our young arithmetical readers carry 
out the reckoning for ten years, and see if there is not 
enough seed by that time to turn ' whole wheat crop 
of the globe to chess. A fif . grown, adult pig-weed, 
will yield eight thousand seeds,—which may increase in 
a few years to countless myriads, just because, as Prof. 
Lindley says, the cultivator was unwilling to make “ a 
single flexure of his vertebral column,” in extracting w 
the first young weed from the soil. There are certain 
weeds, troublesome and costly in the highest degree in 
some regions of country, which are entirely unknown in 
others—simply because no seed have ever been deposited 
there. Then again there are other localities which were 
once plentifully infested, which have been completely 
eradicated, and not a single representative left. We 
could name several farmers who have succeeded in driv¬ 
ing from both soil and seed, the last vestige of that in¬ 
sidious intruder, chess; and several others who ny vigi¬ 
lance and industry had exceedingly lessened the annual 
