160 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
soil to the plant—to its circulation there, and to the maturity of the 
product. All these useful purposes are defeated, where water remains 
in the soil to excess—the seed rots, the vegetable matter which 
should serve as the food-of the crop, remains insoluble, in consequence 
of the absence of heat and air, which the water excludes; or, if the seed 
grows, the plant is sickly, for want of its proper food, and there is conse¬ 
quently a virtual failure in the harvest. It is not from the surface only 
that we are to determine whether land is sufficiently dry to support a 
healthy vegetation; but we are to examine the surface stratum, into 
which the roots of the plants penetrate, and from which they draw their 
food. If this is habitually wet—if it grows marshy plants—if water will 
collect in a hole sunk fifteen inches below the surface—the land is too 
we t for cultivated crops, and means should be adopted to render it more 
dry. From my partial acquaintance with this county, I feel assured that 
much of your best land is rendered unfit for tillage, or the growth of the 
finer grasses, by reason of the excess of water, which passes or reposes 
upon the subsoil, unnoticed by the cultivator. These lands are denomi¬ 
nated cold and sour, and they truly are so. Cold, sour lands are invaria¬ 
bly wet lands below, if not upon the surface. But if the superfluous 
water was judiciously conducted off by efficient underdrains, (for the 
construction of which, you possess the best of materials in abundance,) 
these lands would be rendeied warm and sweet, and highly productive, 
and the outlay would be repaid by the increased value of two or three of 
the first crops. Wet lands are generally rich lands, abounding in vegeta¬ 
ble matters, which water has preserved from decomposition, but which 
readily become the food of plants, when the water is drawn off. Let me 
imagine a case, which I am sure will be 'found to exist in many parts of 
your county. There is a slope of a hill, half a mile in extent, terminating 
in a flat forty rods wide, through which a brook meanders. The soil on 
this slope, and in this flat, is of alight, porous quality, six to twelve inch¬ 
es deep, reposing on a subsoil impervious to water, as clay, rock or hard- 
. pan. By soil, I mean the upper stratum, in which vegetable matters are 
blended with the earthy materials, and which constitutes the true pasture 
of plants. Near the top of this slope, all along on a horizontal level, or 
perhaps lower down, spouts or springs burst through the subsoil, a thing 
very common in hilly districts, the waters from which finding an easy 
passage through the loose soil, spread and run down the slope, and upon 
the subsoil, and through the flat, till they find their level in the brook. 
A thermometer plunged down to the subsoil, will indicate, at midsummer, 
a temperature probably not greater than 60°, whereas to grow and ma¬ 
ture many of our best farm crops, we require a heat in the soil of 70° or 
80°. How shall we remedy this evil, and render this land profitable to 
the occupant ? Simply by making an underdrain or drains, in a gently in¬ 
clining direction, a little below these spouts or springs, and, if practicable, 
somewhat into the subsoil. These will catch and conduct off the spout- 
in«- waters, and by laying the lower plane dry and permeable to heat and 
air, develope all its natural powers of fertility. 
I will suppose another case—that of a flat surface, underlaid by an im¬ 
pervious subsoil. This is rendered unproductive, or difficult to manage, 
by stagnant waters. The rain and snow waters, penetrating the soil, are 
arrested in their downward passage, by the subsoil, which not having 
slope to pass them off, they here remain, and stagnate, and putrify, alike 
prejudicial to vegetable and animal health. The mode of draining such 
grounds, and of rendering them productive and of easy management, is, 
first to surround the field with a good underdrain, and to construct a suf¬ 
ficient open drain from the outlet to carry off the waters. Then with the 
plough, throw the land into ridges of twenty to thirty feet in breadth, ac 
cording to the tenacity of the soil, in the direction of the slope, and sink 
an underdrain in each of the furrows between the ridges, terminating 
them in the lower cross drain The materials of the underdrains, which 
are generally stones, should be laid so low as to admit of the free passage 
of the plough over them. The superfluous water, by the laws of gravita¬ 
tion, settle into these drains, and pass off, and the soil becomes dry, ma¬ 
nageable and productive. An acquaintance called upon a Scotch farmer 
whose farm had been underdrained in this way, and being informed 
that the improvement cost sixteen dollars an acre, tile having been used, 
remarked that it was a costly improvement. “ Yes,” was the farmer’s 
reply: “ but it costs a deal mail- not to doit” which he illustrated by 
pointing to an adjoining farm, like situated, which had not been drained, 
and was overgrown with rushes and with sedge grass, and then to his own 
fields, teeming with luxuriance, and rich in the indications of an abun¬ 
dant harvest 
I have dwelt upon the subject of draining with more detail, because I 
have personally realized its benefits, and am sure it may be extensivly 
gone into with the certain prospect of reward. 
Keep your rand clean. Weeds being generally indigenous, or 
well acclimated, are gross feeders, and exhaust the soil more in propor¬ 
tion to their size than cultivated crops. We should consider that farmer 
a reckless manager, who should suffer strange cattle to consume the food 
prepared for his farm stock. How much more is he deserving the name 
of an economist, who permits his crops to be robbed of their food, and 
consequently stinted in their growth, by thistles, daises, dock and pig 
weed? 
An idea prevails with seme, that weeds, by the shade they afford to 
the soil and to crops, prevent the exhalation of moisture in times of 
drougth. Precisely the reverse is the case. They exhaust the moisture 
of the soil in proportion to the surface of their leaves and stems. Some 
plants, it is affirmed, daily draw from the earth, and exhale from their 
superficies, more than their weight of moisture. 
Keep your land rich. This is to be done by manuring, by pasturing 
and by alternating crops. Most of this county, I believe, is devoted to cat¬ 
tle and sheep husbandly, for which it seems well adapted; and these branch¬ 
es of husbandry afford ample means of enriching the soil and of enlarging the 
grain and root crops. Cattle and sheep make manure—manure makes 
grain, and grass, and roots—these in return feed the family, and make 
meat, milk and wool; and meat, milk and wool are virtually money, the 
great object of the farmer’s ambition, and the reward of his labors.—. 
This is the farmer’s magic chain, which,kept blight by use, is ever strong 
and sure; but if broken or suffered to corrode by neglect, its power and 
efficiency are lost. 
You possess all the earthy elements of a good soil—clay, sand and lime. 
It is your province and your duty to husband and apply the vegetable, 
and most essential element of fertility— manures. These are as much 
the food of your crops, as your crops are food for your cattle, or your fa¬ 
mily; and it is as vain to expect to perpetuate good crops without manure, 
as it would be to expect fat beef and fat mutton, from stinted pasture or 
buckwheat straw. We see, then, that manures are the basis of good 
husbandry, whether we have reference to tillage or cattle farms; and that 
tillage and cattle reciprocally benefit each other. 
It results from these facts, that a farmer should till no more land than 
he can keep dry, anicLEAN, and rich; and that he should keep no 
more stock than his crops will feed well, and that can be made profita¬ 
ble to the farm. 
The farmer who makes but thirty bushels of corn, a dozen bushels of 
rye, or a ton of hay, from an acre of land—and there are not a few who 
fall short of this—is hardly remunerated for his labor: but he who gets 
these measures from half an acre, and every good farmer ought at least 
to do so, realizes a nett product of one half the value of his crop, or re¬ 
ceives twice as much for his labor as the first does. The reason of this 
is, that the one permits his acre to become poor, either from not saving 
and applying his manure, or from spreading it and his labor over too much 
land, or by cropping it too long, while the other keeps his land rich, and 
thereby saves half his labor. How is this disparity increased, when, in¬ 
stead of being double, the crop of the good farmer exceeds that of the 
bad farmer four-fold, incidents that very often happen on adjoining farms? 
If the latter gets one hundred dollars per annum for his labor, the former 
gets four hundred dollars for his labor. No inconsiderable item this, in 
the aggregate of a man’s life, or in the profit and loss account of a large 
farm. 
So with our animals. The food which parsimony, or indolence, or ill judg¬ 
ed economy, doles out to a beast, and which barely keeps him two years, 
would, if judiciously fed out, fatten him in six months; and thereby convert 
three quarters of the food into meat, milk and money, which, in the other 
case, is expended to keep the animal alive. Time is money, as well in 
fattening animals and feeding crops, as in other expenditures of human 
labor. 
Pasturing is a means of inducing fertility. It is computed to add twen¬ 
ty perceni, to the fertility of afirst rate soil. This arises from two causes. 
All that is grown upon the soil, is returned to it in the droppings of the 
animals which graze upon it. And in the second place, wffien broken up 
by the plough, the sward is converted into food for the tillage crops, and 
has been found to be equivalent, in a well set sod, to more than twelve 
loads of dung on the acre. In this way sheep husbandry is known to en¬ 
rich lands rapidly. But this remark does not apply to meadows where 
the crop is carried off, and no equivalent returned to the soil, in the form 
of manure. 
Alternation of crops is unquestionably one of the best and most econo¬ 
mical means of preserving fertility, and of increasing the profits of the 
farm. All crops exhaust the soil more or less, of the general elements 
of fertility, though all do not exhaust to the same extent, nor do all ex¬ 
haust it alike of certain specific properties. It is believed that every fa¬ 
mily of plants requires a specific food, which other families do not stand 
in need of, and which they do not take up. This is evidenced by the fact, 
that wheat cannot be grown profitably, in ordinary grounds, in two succes¬ 
sive years, upon the same field, without a great falling off in the product. 
And it is now laid down as an axiom, in good husbandry, that two crops 
of any small grain should never be taken from the same field in succes¬ 
sive years, because they draw too largely upon the same specific food.— 
But after an interval of four or five years, in which grass and roots inter¬ 
vene, the specific food of the wheat crop has so accumulated in the soil that 
this grain may then be again profitably grown upon it. So with all other 
farm crops, not even excepting the grasses. The law of natural change 
in the products of a soil is so palpable, that in Flanders and Holland, where 
flax is one of the profitable staples, they do not think of cultivating this 
crop upon the same ground oftener than once in ten or twelve years.— 
Our farmers seem to appreciate these truths in reference to tillage crops, 
