Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1868-10-01
Aariemltutal department.

|Sgritaltatal department.
OF SCIENTIFIC TILLAGE.
About twenty years ago New York gen.
tleman purchased small homestead two
miles West of Newark. There were forty
acres, and when the first payment was made
he had no funds in bank to make improve
ments with; for he had taken this piece of
land, not to have polite way of showing
how much money he had made, but that he
and his children might live by tilling it. 1t
was rough old farm, with half-ruinous
farmhouse, large musty-smelling cider
shed, and small, old.fashioned barn.
Great sprawling stone fences, dilapidated
and overgrown for two or three yards on
each side with elder bushes and sumac and
briers, ran across the tract in various direc-
tions. When he put his share in to see
what was the prospect for ryebread and po-
tatoes, he found he had tough case of it.
There were about three inches of soil, in
some places four, perhaps, and below hard
pan Of yellow clay, full of red stones, small
and large. It was hard, rough work for
ploughmen and steers to get up six inches
of this stubborn earth, and when ploughed
and sowed, what would it produce? Five,
and in good seasons, seven bushels of rye
to the acre. One field was overgrown with
young persimmons, so they called it the
persimmon lot. Sometimes it would give
fifty bushels to the acre of Irish potatoes
and sometimes it would not. But, with
these discoursgements and drawbacks the
purchaser had one supreme; oyermastering
advantage. He had the knowledge, the
ideas, the conviction that make one scien-
tifc farmer. He believed that chemistry,
in which he was learned, would aid him in
the operations of agriculture that skill,
patience, laDor, and shreTd management
would enable him to bring order out of the
chaos and, make the rough hillside yield
beauty for ashes. He believed that the
productiveness of a soil depends no more on
its chemical constituents than on its me-
chanical condition as much on the plough
as on the dung-heap and that nobody has
improved much on old Roman Cato's three
rules for farming: First, Plough thorough
ly. Second-Plough again. Third-Put
in the fertilizers. He commenced with one
corner, about tenth Of the tract, and
ploughed it well and manured it literally.
A great number of stones came to the sur
face; these were picked of and hauled away
to make deep and perpetual road bed
The bushes were grubbed out, and the old
stone walls all hauled away for foundation
stones and roads. This was kept up year
after year till more than three thousand
carloads of rock had been taken from the
surface. Professor Mapes was not satisfied
that he had obeyed Cato's first rule about
ploughing thoroughly. He thought he
ought to invade that tough subsoil, and let
air and moisture into it, and make it por-
GUS, so in dry spell it would act as sponge
and draw up moisture from the stratum be-
low. Now came the question, how he was
to loosen it in the best manner. He could
take big plough and two or three yoke of
oxen and break up and turn over the earth.
But this would invert the soil, throwing the
dark tilth now enriched with stable manure
and lime and salt and bones and blood and
decayed fish, ten inches below the upturned
subsoil. This did not seem to be the thing
at all, so he set himself to work to invent a
ploug gh. The mole that can work in the
ground so fast gave him hint. He made
a model, and then changed it, and changed
lit again, till it worked to suit him. He did
not call it plough, but a subsol litter,
"Mapes's Subsoil LITTER" It looks like q
big, slender fat-iron attached to the plough
beam. 1t goes six or eight inches below
the bottom of furrow-bed, lifting and
breaking up the hard.pan, but not turning
it. He used it in all his fields, and went
on adding blood and bone and fish and lime
and dung to the soil till he made place
which is pronounced the best farm in the
United States. We walked all over these
acres the other day, spade and rule in hand,
to probe the soil and question it with scru-
tiny. There is surface of twelve inches
alike throughout the mass, of dark color,
mellow and fine, neither muddy in wet wealth
er, nor dusty in drought. Below this is a
subsoil that for six inches is mellow and
porous, though unfertilized. And below
this are tile drains on most of the tract for
ty feet apart. Some idea of the vigor of
this soil may be obtained by knowing that
Mr.. Quinn, the manager, who realizes upon
the surface all the plans and calculations of
the Professor, can plant cabbage, on that
old persimmon lot of seven acres, two and
a half feet apart each way, and be sure that
ninety out Of every hundred will head. 1t
makes no difference whether it rains or not
on the Mapes Farm. In 1868, when there
was parching drouth over half the coun-
try, the blades of corn all fired and turned
yellow, the lower leaves of cabbages shriv-
elling and dropping off, Mr.. Quinn made a
full crop. He kept small subsoil litter
constantly moving between the cabbage
rows and thus drew moisture from below,
since it was not given from above. A good
ploughing is frequently as helpful, and
sometimes more so than generous shower.
Does the Mapes Farm pay? .."
Yes, it does, as we'll as any equal area in
the country. For agricultural purposes