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of those destroyed, the number of stems is less numerous in consequence, 
the leaves are not so crowded and can better perform their functions, 
the straw is shorter and stouter, not so liable to be laid, and the grain 
is better fed or ripened. The utility of removing the leaves of over- 
luxuriant wheat appears to have been known to cultivators in the time of 
Virgil, who thus alludes to the practice in his Georgies : 
Him shall I praise, who lest the o’erloaded ear, 
Shed with prone stem the promise of the year, 
Feeds down its rank luxuriance when the blade 
Waves level with the ridge its rising shade. 
Perennial herbaceous plants lay up in the fall a fund of nutriment 
destined for the support of the first emitted leaves and roots in the fol¬ 
lowing spring. The vigor of the first growths will, all other circum¬ 
stances being similar, be in proportion to the quantity of organizable 
matter contained in the roots ; and the amount of organizable matter 
will depend chiefly on the action of efficient foliage; we may thus, by 
close stocking meadows immediately after the hay is gathered, diminish 
the crop of hay in the following summer as effectually as if we had pas¬ 
tured them in spring. In a paper by Andrew Knight, on the state of the 
sap of trees during winter, he states that “he had constantly found in 
his practice, as a farmer, that the produce of his meadows had been im¬ 
mensely increased, when the herbage of the preceding year had remained 
to perform its proper office till the end of the autumn, on ground which 
had been mowed early in the summer—whence he had been led to ima¬ 
gine that the leaves, both of trees and herbaceous plants, are alike em¬ 
ployed during the latter part of summer in the preparation of matter 
calculated to afford food to the expanding buds and blossoms of the 
succeeding spring, and to enter into the composition of new organs of 
assimilation.” 
If we break up new land early in the spring or in the fall, we know 
that the sod does not rot so well—we do not so certainly destroy the 
grassses and other natural herbage as if we ploughed in June. In early 
summer, the sap which had been deposited in the roots the previous fall 
has, in a great measure, been expended in the production of foliage, the 
quantity of succulent green leaves ploughed under and deprived of light 
speedily decay. Early in spring, when active vegetation has scarcely com- 
