JL JLJL VV JLJ JL JL V 
.51 .M«nV\\Vy Publication, devoted to Agriculture—cacii Xo. lb 
\>ages. 
VoL. III. 
ALBANY, APRIL, 1836. 
No. 2. 
PUBLISHED BY THE N. Y. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
J. BUEL, Conductor. 
TERMS.— Fifty Cents per annum, to be paid in advance. 
Special Agents. — Judah Dobson, Philadelphia—Messrs. Hovey, Boston— 
George C. Thorburn and Alexander Smith, New-York, and Samuel F. 
Glenn, office of the National Intelligencer, Washington. Any gentlemen 
who will enclose ns $5, free of postage, will be considered also a special agent, 
and will be entitled to every eleventh copy, or its equivalent, as commission. 
O’ The Cultivator, according to the decision of the Post-master General, is 
subject only to newspaper postage, viz: one cent on each number within the 
state, and within one hundred miles from Albany, out of the state—and one 
and a half cents on each number, to any other part of the Union. 
__ Til K CULTBVATO11. _ 
To improve the Soil and the Mind. 
OCP" We have made an effort, by putting some pages in small letter, to insert 
the favors of our correspondents in to-day’s paper; but we have not been able 
to fulfil our wishes. Several are necessarily postponed, as are, also, several 
other articles prepared for this number. Yet we feel proud of the rich treat 
which our correspondents have enabled us to present to-day to our patrons. 
IRRIGATION. 
A highly respected correspondent thinks we have done wrong in 
discouraging irrigation, in our January number, and suggests, that 
the turning water from the highway, on to meadows, charged with 
fertilizing matters, constitutes a branch of irrigation. Our re¬ 
marks have also attracted the notice of the Hon. J. W. Lincoln, 
who in the New England Farmer has expressed his “deep regret” 
at the error of our opinion; and he quotes Blith, Parkinson, Davy, 
Sinclair, &.c, to prove, that irrigation is a great improver of land, 
and that it adds greatly to its products. All this we can readily ad¬ 
mit, without, however, acceding to the proposition, that this branch 
of improvement, in its systematic form, is suited to the present con¬ 
dition of our husbandry. Where every rood, or where every acre 
of land, is made to support a human being, and the price of labor 
merely nominal, great expenditure in improving the soil is justifia¬ 
ble and often necessary. But in our country, where the best wild 
land can be had for ten shillings an acre, and where labor is high, 
the case is far different. In many parts of the old continent, 
trenching, or spade husbandry, is extensively resorted to for field 
crops; and this both improves the soil and increases its products. 
Yet no one would venture to recommend it as a suitable farm prac¬ 
tice here. Circumstances alter cases. 
The first chapter on irrigation, suggested by our correspondent, 
that of diverting the waters from highways, charged with earthy 
and vegetable matters, upon meadows, does not, in our view, be¬ 
long to irrigation, nor do we find such a construction sanctioned in 
any work that has fallen under our notice. This practice we de¬ 
cidedly recommend. Irrigation implies the command of water, and 
its use at stated periods, and not a dependance upon the clouds for 
a supply. We spoke of systematic irrigation, not of accidental. 
And we are prepared also to admit, that in some peculiar cases, and 
to a limited extent, irrigation may be adopted with advantage even 
here. Our proposition is, that as a general mode of improvement, 
or even one of moderate extent, the system of irrigation adopted 
in Wilts and Gloucester, in Britain, which counties have been cited 
as examples, is unsuited to our climate and scale of agricultural 
expenditure. The high respect we entertain for the gentlemen 
from whose opinion we dissent in this matter, compels us, at least 
from courtesy, to state the grounds of our dissent. They may be 
comprised under the following heads. 
1. Irrigation seriously interferes with the system of alternating 
crops, one of the greatest improvements in modern husbandry. 
2. It produces coarse and innutricious herbage. 
3. It tends to engender disea e, in man and beast. 
4. It costs more than it comes to. 
5. All its advantages may be obtained by good culture. And 
6. Its benefits have not yet been demonstrated in our practice. 
1. The facl is not generally known, that “ over the greatest part 
NO. 2 . -YOL. III. 
■of England land is kept permanently in grass, for the purpose of 
mowing; This system has become the very habit of the country, 
and by the general adoption of it, beyond a question, a vast 
public loss is suslttil^ed. ,, — Low. This grows out of a long per- 
p tuated prejudice in ihe landholders, who are not the practical 
farmers, but who make it a condition in their leases. Hence irri¬ 
gation is resoited to, but even then to a limited extent, to remedy 
the defects of a bad practice, at war with the first principles of na¬ 
ture, and to increase the otherwise scanty herbage on meadows 
which have lain in grass hundreds of years. But in the best culti¬ 
vated districts of Great Britain, where modern improvement has 
been most apparent, as in Norfolk and in Scotland, and where the 
alternating system lays at the foundation of farm profits, irrigation 
is not practised. In these distiicts there are no perennial mea¬ 
dows. By good draining, all grounds are made to alternate in 
grain, grass and roots. Do the sagacious, industrious and money¬ 
making Scotch believe in the utility of irrigation ? Loudon says 
this art is not pract sed in Scotland; and Low, her la'e and popular 
writer and professor of agriculture, says, “ in the north of England 
the practice almost ceases; and on the Scottish side of the Tweed 
it is yet hardly known as a branch of the rural art.” 
2. The flooding of meadows must necessarily encourage the 
growth of rank coarse herbage, far less nutritious than that which 
grows upon dry grounds; and unless the land is so fitted that the 
water may be entirely drawn off when required, and this requires 
generally previous and efficient under-draining, the evil will be a 
growing and a serious one. 
3. Stagnant waters, and soils highly saturated with water, when 
the vegetable growth of the season is undergoing decay, are al¬ 
ways prejudicial to health. “ It is by summer flooding,” says Low, 
“that the fatal disease of rot is introduced, so that no sheep should 
ever touch the meadows which have been flooded during the sum¬ 
mer months.” 
4. To fit lands for irrigation, it is necessary, first, that Ihe sur¬ 
face should be a horizontal level, that the whole may be flooded 
with water, wilh suitable embankments and drains, that it may be let 
on or drawn oft’at pleasure; or recond, that the surface be so grad¬ 
ed, and the ground furnished with conductors, feeders, drains, &tc., 
that the water may be made to run —for it will not do to permit it 
to stand, and become stagnant—over the whole-surface, and also 
to be drawn off. A common way is to conduct the water along 
the upper side of the meadow, to lay the land in ridges in the di¬ 
rection of the inclined plane below, and to conduct the water in 
shallow feeders along the tops of these ridges, and permitting it to 
filter down the slopes of these ridges, on each side, to the centre 
furrows, where narrow drains are constructed to carry it off. The 
expense varies according to the mode of irrigation, and the nature 
of the ground. Although, according to Smith and Loudon, it may 
ordinarily range from five to ten pounds per acre, (=to $22 to $44) 
and is sometimes less, yet that in Wiltshire, to which we arc re¬ 
ferred as a pattern, and “where they are anxious to have their 
meadows formed in the most perfect manner, the expense per acre 
has amounted to £40,” (=to $177-60.) When we consider that 
in Wiltshire it is a business which has been learnt, and compare the 
price of labor in the two countries, it cannot be extravagant to say, 
that irrigation would cost fifty per cent more here than it does in 
Britain. We are afraid our farmers would rather purchase new 
lands, at a moderate price, than bestow this much to render old 
lands productive, as water meadows. It is no easy task, says 
Smith on irrigarion, to give an irregular surface that regular yet 
various figure which shall be fit for the overflowing of water. It 
is very necessary for the operator to have just ideas of levels, lines 
and angles; a knowledge of superficial forms will not be sufficient; 
accurate notions of solid geometry arc absolutely necessary to put 
such a surface proper for the reception of water, without the trou¬ 
ble and expense of doing much of the work twice over. 
5. This proposition is proved by the practice of Scotland and 
Norfolk, already noticed,—and by the opinions of some of the best 
