Year: 1859

study out ways of expending our crops Judi
ciously, and making the most of the manures
they will return to the soil. Sections of coun-
try may be pointed out in Europe, not natural
ly more favored for soil and climate than our
own, where the land has been cultivated for
hundreds of years, and is now more productive
than at any former period. and far more so,
for acre, than the very best virgin soils and
bottom lands of our own country. Another
thing deserving particular consideration, land
that is in high cultivation, and is judiciously
cropped can be kept at high mark of fertility
with ease, as compared with making exhausted
land fertile. The very luxuriance of the crops
gives back large mass of roots and stems to
the soil. Especially is this the case when a
grass sward has been allowed to form so that
in breaking the sod for a new rotation of crops,
we can turn under many tons per acre of mat
ter fertilizing to the land contained in the roots
and stems of the sward. Then, too, land in
high condition is much less injuriously affected
by unfavorable pcculiarities Of the season, as
to drouth or moisture, cold or heat, than if it
were in poor tilth, and indeed is in good de-
gree independent of these peculiarties. In any
season, it will pay larger profit in proportion
to what has been expended to obtain the crop,
than can be derived from exhausted land.


In feeding out the grain crops pretty freely
on the farm, there will be some years when the
growth of stock, the meats, the wool, the dairy
products, &C., into which the grain has been
converted will sell high enough to pay consid-
erably more per bushel for the grain than it
would have brought had it been sold off the
farm; other years the grain may perhaps bring
greater imme late income if sold off; but
taking one year with another, and considering
the steady improvement of the farm, where the
crops are expended upon il, there will be more





off. In period, say of twelve or twenty years,
am inclined to think that seyenty-iNe cents
per bushel realized for corn for instance fed
out on the farm, and the manure returned to
the land, is as good one dollar per bushel,
realized by sending it off to market for cash,
and the farm robbed of an equivalent in manure
for the corn then sold Off


Take, for instance, the whole amount or num-
ber of bushels of grain of any kind produced
on an acre of land or on the farm, and place it
in pile together. 1t makes only a small heap,
even though the yield per acre be very large
one. Yet that heap, small as it is, contains
large per cent of the very essence of the fertil-
ity of the soil that produced it, and has taxed
the land far more than if it had only produced
the stalk and leaf of the plant, or in other
words, forage crop of any kind This gruin
fed out with the hay and other crops, adds won
derfully to the activity and fertilizng power of
the farm-yard manure, and greatly quickcns the
soil to renewed efforts at production Then,
| again, by feeding out the grain with the forage
crops, and thus making manure Astounding in
gases and salts YOU NAV compost with it much
larger proportions of muck. turf, the rich
soil washed into hollow places, or other mate
rlals gathered up about the farm to swell the
manure heap, and have them all decomposed
and sweetened and prepared to become the food


q al. 4. .l.
cattle -droppings were alone composed of the
more lifeless and inactive clements derived only
from hay, straw and other forage.


Mr. Coke, the late Earl of Leicester, once
said, ''the more meat a poor land farmer sent
to Smithfeld, the more grain he would be
abled to sell per acre at Mark Lane. Convert
plenty of corn and cake into meat; for the val
ue of farm-yard manure is in proportion to
what it is made OF. If cattle eat straw alone,
the dung is straw alone, the cattle are straw the
farm is straw, and the farmer is straw-and
they are all straw together


Not long ago, | had four cows come up to
the stable in the fall, which l thought might
yield good supply Of milk through the winter


if well fed. also had four other animals, cows
and hciiers, which were not expected to give
much milk till the following grass season. The
first four were tied in the stable side by side


and received each, in addition to hay and stalks


four quarts of small potatoes each morning, and
two quarts of corn and oat meal each evening


through the winter. As was expected, they
gave good mess of milk, and came out well in
the spring. The manure of these four cows
was thrown out Of stable window, under the
cattle shed by itself. The other four animals


were tied in the same stable, next to the first


four, and received only hay and corn-foddcr.-
Their manure was thrown out by itself, at the
next stable window, and under the same shed,


so that the two heaps lay side by side The


heap made by the four cows that were daily


messed with potatoes and meal, kept hot and
smoking all winter, and was wholly free from
frost. The heap made by the other animals


that had only hay and stalks, showed 10 signs


of fermentation, and was somewhat frozcn.--
Observing this difference from time to time, Gu
} liosity prompted me in the spring to apply
these two heaps of manure separately but in
equal quantities, side by side on a piece of corn
ground. The superiority of the corn crop,
| where the manure from the messed cattle was
applied over that where the other heap was
, spread, was quite apparent and striking; and
} called my attention, more particularly than it
was ever before directed, to the Importance OF