244 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
for pastures—or rather wheat fields—new, to repeat on a still 
larger scale the same money-making but land-killing process. 
The plowing of this new land is always shallow. Every suc¬ 
cessive crop diminishes the supply of organic matter; and 
from the careless culture, every successive jear increases the 
stock of weeds. When the yield of the first year—perhaps 
30 or 40 bushels—has diminished to 12, and 10, or 8, then the 
Agricultural Bohemian, who has been guilty of this agricide, 
resorts to the neighboring store, or grocery, where with his 
neighbors he despondently discusses the dismal piospect. It 
is unanimously agreed that the failure is “mysterious”—that 
“ the climate has changed”—that anything and everything is 
the trouble, except utter ignorance of nature’s laws and viola¬ 
tion of her fundamental rules on the part of her slanderers 
and persecutors. 
If this constant cropping with wheat were accompanied 
with the very best system of culture, so that the ground should 
be mechanically in a proper condition, and w T eeds be kept out, 
good crops of wheat could be grown much longer without 
manuring the soil, and a tolerable crop could perhaps be grown 
indefinitely, by proper cultivation , simply. The experiments 
of Mr. Lawes, of England, seem to indicate this. He raised 
twenty-seven successive crops of wheat from one plat of land, 
without any manure. The crop of 1844 was fifteen bushels 
per acre, and that of 1870 exactly fifteen bushels; this amount 
also being the average yield during the entire time. It should 
be understood that the ground was kept absolutely free from 
weeds, the wheat being in drills and the soil cultivated be¬ 
tween them. The experiments made by this gentleman are 
probably the longest and most valuable on record, and I shall 
have occasion to refer to them again. 
I have thus indicated the two leading, and probably almost 
the only causes of the generally diminished yield of wheat in 
the older settled portions'of the country. They are seen to 
be, first, continued cropping -without manuring; and second, a 
poor cultivation, that neither stirs the soil to a proper depth, 
