9-1 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
old asheries, which may be employed to great advantage to agri¬ 
culture, whenever the agriculturists of frontier districts find time 
and disposition to arrest the deterioration of their lands. The small 
quantity of alkaline salt and gypsum which they contain, also ren¬ 
ders them much superior to common calcareous matter, as a top 
dressing for every kind of grass. Soap-boilers’ ashes, according to 
the “ Complete Grazier,” are also excellent on a peat moss, in strong 
cold soils, when applied in the quantity of two or three cart-loads an 
acre. In Lancashire, they have been found good and durable on dry 
pastures, and have also been successfully used in other parts, and in 
various proportions. They are generally considered better for pasture 
than arable, and crops of clover hay have been more than doubled 
by them. The effect of this manure is, that it always destroys bugs and 
vermin of every kind. Evidence of these latter facts may be found 
in communications to the British Board of Agriculture, vol. vi. 
part ii. 
EFFECTS OF CROPPING. 
We have heretofore endeavored to make it plain to our readers, 
that living and dead plants contain the same'elementary matters,— 
that dead plants afford the proper aliment for living plants,—and 
that consequently the fertility of a soil will be increased or diminish¬ 
ed, in proportion to the quantity of dung,- or vegetable food, which 
the farmer returns to it.’ New, or virgin soils, may contain a large 
supply of vegetable matter or humus, enough to feed several successive 
crops; yet the powers of fertility decrease with every succeeding one, 
if the crops are carried off from the soil and nothing returned to it to 
supply the loss,—until finally, if the system .of cropping goes on in 
this way, the food of plants will become exhausted, and the land- 
become sterile and barren, for all the useful purposes of husbandry! 
If we look to the old continent, we shall perceive that immense dis¬ 
tricts, once fertile and populous, have, by the injudicious manage¬ 
ment and violence of man, become almost waste and depopulated. 
A great portion of Egypt, of Judea, and a part of Spain, which once 
sustained their millions of inhabitants, and were to the world exam¬ 
ples in the arts of culture and civilization, may be cited in illustra¬ 
tion of this fact. And even in this new country, the soil, from the 
abuse of those who are charged with its culture, has already, in many 
districts, put on the garb of barrenness and old age, and threatens 
to be not much longer tributary to the wants of man. 
If we put an ox to a stack of hay, he may subsist Upon it for a 
longer or a shorter period, according to the quantity of food which 
it contains; but if we do not provide for him a further Supply, when 
the stack is consumed, the ox will die. So with our crops : Provi¬ 
dence has imparted fertility to our soil, and has endowed man with 
the faculty, and provided him with the means, of perpetuating that 
fertility. But the fertility of the soil will become exhausted, like 
the stack of hay, by cropping, and unless renovated by the care of 
the husbandman, our crops, like the ox, will die, or cease to grow, 
for want of food. And it is as improvident to neglect the one as 
the other—as reprehensible to starve the vegetable as the animal. 
However men may theorize upon the food of plants, every farmer 
knows that dung is an unfailing source of fertility—that dung makes 
grain, and grass, and roots—that grain, grass and roots fatten cattle 
—and that cattle make manure. These all work together on the 
principle of the endless chain, and suggest a certain means of pre¬ 
serving the fertility of our lands. 
Crops exhaust the fertility of the soil, in proportion to the nou¬ 
rishment which they respectively draw from it. To keep up our com¬ 
parison, we may liken the wheat and the corn crops to our neat 
cattle and horses, which are gross feeders, and require a large sup¬ 
ply of food; and our grass and roots, to sheep and swine, which 
consume less—which thrive on scanty and coarse fare, and in a 
measure requite us for their keep, by the vegetable food they 
impart again to the soil. The hog and the sheep—the grass and 
the roots, will live upon the pasture or soil which will not sustain 
the more gross feeders—yet, like the latter, they will only thrive 
well when well fed. 
Von Thaer, the distinguished head of the Prussian agricultural 
school at Moegelin, who has not perhaps his superior in the practi¬ 
cal and scientific business of farming any where, has turned his at¬ 
tention, for several years, to a series of experiments and observa¬ 
tions, with a view to ascertain the degree of diminution or augment-, 
ation of fertility, which soils ordinarily experience from the culture 
of the principal farm crops, and has combined the results of his ob¬ 
servations in a series of tables. Although those do not possess per¬ 
fect accuracy, for any thing like this would be impossible from the 
nature of the inquiry, they nevertheless serve as useful data to 
farmers who are anxious to preserve, or to increase, the fertility of 
their soils, by judicious rotations, and by applying all the means of 
fertility which the farm affords. 
“The vegetative power,” says British Husbandry, “is supposed 
to be in production to the quantity of humus , (or soluble vegetable 
matter,) or mould, which is contained in the soil, and its consump¬ 
tion has been found to be regulated according to the amount of nu¬ 
tritive matter consumed. by the crops which are grown upon it.— 
The degrees of exhaustion thus occasioned, have only been fixed by 
naturalists with any degree of certainty, in so far as regards the 
usual species of cultivated grain and pulse.; for, as to the other pro¬ 
ducts of the earth, although they have doubtless similar effects when 
similarly repeated, yet those, which consist of vegetable roots and 
grasses, and which are drawn from the land before they have per¬ 
fected, their seed, are nevertheless—whether from the influence at¬ 
tributed to their shade upon the soil, from sustenance drawn from 
the air- and water, or-from other causes with which we are not ac¬ 
quainted—only viewed as ameliorating crops. Corn crops are, 
however; considered, respectively to exhaust in proportions which 
render the’ proportion of about 4| bushels of wheat equal to that of 
6 buslielsof rye, 83 of barley, and 12 of oats.” 
“According to all the experiments which have been made, there 
is reason to suppose, however, that upon a soil of moderate fertility, 
art average crop of wheat impoverishes the land to the extent of 40 
per centj while one of rye only produces that effect as far as 30.— 
Although barley is more exhausting than oats, yet, upon strong land, 
in a less perfect state of culture, the latter produces proportionably 
larger crops, consequently absorbs more nutriment; and, for this 
reasqn, they may be both stated at 25 per cent. 
“ The exhaustion by these crops is proportionately repaired, and 
the land ib restored to its former nutritive powers, in three ways, 
namely— 
By the application of putrescent manure; according to its 
quantity and quality. 
By the ground being left a certain time under pasture; ac¬ 
cording to the number of stock which it can support. 
By the operation of a summer fallow; according to the 
manner in which it is performed.” 
Von Thaer considers the exhaustion by grain crops in the follow¬ 
ing relative proportions:—Wheat 4 degrees, rye 3|, barley 2|, oats 
ly 6 o p e f bushel of product; that upon poor soils, whose original fe¬ 
cundity is 40, according to the scale given in the 4th No. of the pre¬ 
sent volume, a fallow adds 10 degrees to its fertility, pasture 20, and 
8 tons of manure, of ordinary quality, 50 degrees—so that the ma¬ 
nure and fallow, or manure and pasture, add 60 or 70 degrees, and 
are more than sufficient to double what the crop would have been 
without them. Without them, a qrop of rye would have yielded but 
five bushels per acre; with them, the yield would be 7\ to 10 bush¬ 
els. A fallow is beneficial, not only on account of the fertilizing 
properties it may draw from the atmosphere, and by the influence 
of its working on the land, but from the weeds and vegetable mat¬ 
ters which it leaves. Pasture is fertilizing by the droppings of the 
stock, and the rich sward it gives to the plough and to the tilled 
crop; 
In the two following tables, the journal, which is about two-thirds 
of an English acre, is the measure of land experimented upon.— 
The schiffel is more than a bushel and a half, Winchester measure. 
These tables are predicated upon accurate experiments, and show 
the augmentation or diminution of fertility, caused by the crops, the 
manures, the pasture and the fallow. 
TRIENNIAL SYSTEM. 
Fecundity. 
Crops and manures. ,- A -,, 
Augmentation. Diminution. 
Fallow,.. 
6 4-10 loads of manure,. 
67 deg. 
.Rye, 6 schiffels,.. 
30 deg. 
Barley, 6 do... 
Fallow, .. 
10 deg. 
21 deg. 
Rye, 31 schiffels. 
Oats, 4 do. 
Fallow, light folded, ... 
17* deg. 
10 deg. 
Rye,.. 
20 deg. 
