VOL. I, NO. 27.
XH-E. PIONEER.
AGRICULTURAL.
AN ADDRESS
BY HORACE GREELY,
BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETV,
AT ITS ANNUAL FAIR.
Lafayette, Ind., Oct. 13,1853.
1'f
1,'t . CONTINUED. " .
r - Here, then, experience has been out
stripped by science, -whose torch irradi
ates the future with light drawn directly
from the' present, not reflected from the
fast. Experience has shown that a par
ticular rotation is preferable to the growth
of the same plant on the same soil for a
succession of years; but Science forecasts
beyond this, and affirms that any possible
rotation must be' preferable to incessant
and unchanging repetition, for reasons
trhich lie deep in the bosom of nature and
are insenerable from her verv vitality. As
, r r
surely as experience has demonstrated the
ejrpediency of keeping cattle where they
bare grass and water both, instead of shut
ting up a part where they will have grass
enough but no water, and the residue
where they will have abundance of water
but no grass or other food, so clearly does
science . demonstrate the advantage of
growing different crops in rotation. . '
-. But in answering our first question,
"Why should 'different crops be grown in
rotation?" Science has thrown open, a
wide field of profitable inquiry.l.Wevhave
seen that five good crops of Indian corn
cannot be grown off the same ground for
five successive years, unless by virtue of
profuse and expensive manuring; because
each crop has absorbed an undue propor
tion of certain elements or properties es
sential to corn. Saving others, less vital
to maize, but more necessary to wheat,
clover, fcc, undisturbed in the soil. We
now know, therefore, that any average
soil, regarded with reference to any par
ticular plant, possesses certain elements
in excess, while it is deficient in others;
and we demand of science that she tell us
just how wc may most checply and easily
supply, not elements of fertility in general,
but those particular elements which are
deficient, considered with reference to our
purpose.5 We desire not to spend our
time and means in filling a soil on which
wheat is never to be grown with costly el
ements which wheat alone will require or
take up, but to invest each dollar and day,
so far as we may, in enriching that soil
with the elements wherein it i3 now defi
cient, but which our next crop will never
theless require. In other words, since it
is not our practice to plow, plant and cul
tivate our entire farms, forests, ravines
and all, because we purpose to harvest
Indian corn and wheat from a small part
of,thcm,- so we desire to exercise alike
discrimination and practice a like economy
in the production or purchase ' and appli
cation of manures. And to do this, we
appeal to science for an analysis of the
different soils of our various fields, to de
termine wherein each is deficient, each rel
atively redundant, that we may apply va-
rious fertilizers accordingly. And this is
the basis, and all the basis, of science far
ming. , Let me linger still on this topic of book-farming-,
and pile illustration on illustra
tion of its true character and manifold ad
vantages. You may tell me that this is
needless, but I know better; since I know
there are tens of thousands of farmers in
'every quarter nay, right here in Indiana
some of them, I doubt not, now before
me who take no Agricultural paper
hay, no paper at all! because they think
they can't afford it! that it has no other
than a speculative or fancy value for their
use that they would be the poorer for ta
king it! Now I maintain that no farmer
-or artisan that can read can really afford
tin do without at least three weekly news
papers one to bring him the general
news, politics and social movements of his
time; another to teach him whatever of
discovery, invention or improvement may
from time to time be made in his own pur
suits or calling; and the third to keep him
advised of whatever of -interest may trans
pire in his own locality or county. He
may be so very poor and inefficient that he
is justified in obtaining two of these by
exchanges with his equally luckless neigh
bors; but these three he should at least
read every week, becausehe cannot afford
to be without the intelligence they bring
him. And, while there are thousands who
arc bringing up sons for farmers and
daughters for housewives "without taking
a periodical or even owning a book that
. treats of farming or Housewifery, it is ab
surd, to say that this stupid prejudice
against book-farming has been already
sufficiently dealt with since it is this day
" so potent and mischievous. Bear with me,
then, while I attempt to let in some day
light upon it through the relation of a(
few homely facts :
I was visiting some old friends in Ver
mont last summer, when I observed in the
garden of them the most thrifty and luxu
riant : grape-vino that I had ever seen
growing in so cold a climate. Now it is
one advantage possessed by the class of
jgnorant cultivators to which I belong over
" that sprt who not merely know nothing
but glqry in it, that we are not at all re
: Juctant to confess our ignorance when we
. see a chance of thus mitigating it.: I,
therefore, at once asked the lady . whose
vine this, was, to tell me by what means
she had insured it such vigor and produc
tiveness; and he replied that she had
made it her rule, ever since the vine was
set then?, to throw a pail-full of soap
suds at its root at the close of every washing-day.,
Again: in the same garden, I
remarked a scar or ring around each plum
tree, just above.the. ground, and, on inqui
ry, ascertained that these trees had been
girdled last spring- by some malicious
scoundrel," who had halted one dark night,
on his way from the gutter to the state
prison, to perpetrate this dastardly out
rage. The owner discovered the mischief
early next morning, and, having a pot of
copal varnish in the house, speedily ap
plied it with a brush to the wound on each
tree, covering each with acoat of varnish;
and by this means every tree was saved.
When I saw them in midsummer, they
were as green and thrifty as any tres
within miles. Now I do not stand here
to maintain that soap-suds will always in
sure an abundance of fine grapes, nor
that a coating of vanish, seasonably ap
plied, will always save girdled trees; for I
do not know such to be fact. I trust fur
ther experience and inquiry will cast light
on both points that soap-suds will be
withheld from the door-yard and given to
the grape-vines; and that every tree that
any prowling rascal may gingle will be
promptly coated with vanish until we
shall determine under what circumstances,
and with what .limitations, potash or soda
is beneficial to grapes and varnish an anti
dote for girdling. The point I make is
this, fliat no sane farmer, having heard
this relation, will henceforth throw away
his soap-suds or neglect varnishing his gir
dled trees, unles he learns some reason for
doing otherwise; and that, if he would do
so on the strength of my mere narration,
he ought many times rather to do so had
he found these sane receipts in an Agri
cultural paperor manual, where the chan
ces are ten to one that it would not have
found a place unless , on the strength of
testimony more reliable than mine be
cause founded on a wider and more varied
experience, and subjected to a more rigid
scrutiny. : '
Take another case: My friend Dr. R.
T. Underhill was a physician in exten
sive practice some twenty years ago, when,
in the prime of life, having beeome hear
tily tired of gallipots and bone-sawing, he
shook off the dust of our city from his feet,
and resolved henceforth to live an honest
life as a grower of fruits. He went forty
miles up the Hudson, bought a neck of
land, and commenced the cultivation of the
Grape, which he has since prosecuted with
scientific knowledge, untiring energy, and
at length with decided success.' He has
probably assuaged more suffering wkh his
grapes than he ever created by his drugs;
he has grown considerably younger by
his twenty years' farming, and is now ta
king his place among the most brisk and
genial of our youth an admirable speci
men of that branch of "Young 'Amer
ica" which does not hate to work nor loner
for an opportunity to steal. -
"Well: the doctor, since the untimely
death of the lamented Downing, stands,
probably, at the head of our fruit-growers,
with whom one knotty problem of the
last few years has been how to counter
act the ravages of the curculio, which is
nearly robbing us of plums, for which his
taste is equal to ours, while in the matter
of gratifying it he is decidedly ahead of
us. By the time he has taken his quota,
the plums left on a tree, or score of trees,
are not worth gathering. But Dr. Under
bill, by long sturdy and careful observa
tion, has discovered the means of com
pletely outwitting him. He has found, by
watching and noting her movements, that
the female curculio will not deposit her
eggs where they, when the plums contain
ing them drop, will fall into water, her in
stinct teaching her that they will thus ,be
drowned. Taking advantage of this in
stinct, the doctor plants his plum-trees on
the bank of a stream or pond, and gives
the trunks such an inclination that all their
branches overhang the water. Thus the
desolater is checkmated by his own instinct,
and the fruit preserved from his ravages.
I know nothing cleverer in its way than
this device. . ' . .
Now I suppose there is no contemner
of 'Book-farming' so mulish or so dull
that he would not, after hearing of this
device, take advantage of any brook or
pond he might have on his premises, and
set his plum-trees where they will be safe
from the curculio. But suppose the dis
covery had been made by some fruit-grower
of the last century, and duly recorded
in a book, had since been subjected to a
thousand ordeals, and had passed trium
phant through them all would it have
been less acceptable or less valuable than
it now is? It it be worth our while to
learn at all, what difference can be imag
ined between the knowledge founded on a
neighbor's experience and that contained
in a book? If there be any, are not the
odds altogether in favor of that prescrip
tion which has undergone the wider scru
tiny and been subjected to the more rigor
ous criticism?
, And here let me speak of another, who
more recently shook off the dust of our
City's pavements to spend the later half
of his life on a farm. I allude to Profes
sor James J, Mapes, whose fame as an
Agriculturist must have . reached very
many among you. . It cannot be many
years it seems to me but five er six
since Prof. Mapes, who was extensively
engaged in sugar-refining and had heavy
dealings in sugar came to a dead halt, or
rather a dead smash. Stripped of means
and of credit, he felt too old to launch
UPPER SANDUSKY, OHIO, THURSDAY, NOV. 10, 1853,
again on the dangerous sea of commerce,
whose waves had so lately and so deeply
engulphed him; so he hired a bit of land
in New-Jersey, removed his family thith
er, and resolved to turn the chemical and
other scientific knowledge which had so
little availed him as a sugar-refiner, to ac
count in the novel vocation of a farmer.
He was very destitute, and of course got
on but slowly at first; and when he first
undertook to lecture in illustration of far
ming as a science, I well remember how
very general was the predjudice and deris
ion he encountered. But he persevered
both in farming and lecturing; and he has
gtoriously succeeded, X. presume there
were many errors in his .'earlier inculca
tion; there may be rs6me yet, for he is a
genius, and genius is too apt to leap hast
ily to. sweeping conclusions from inade
quate premises. But, whatever his faults
the root of the matter was in him, and his
career has proved it. As a lecturer, an
editor, and as a practical farmer, he is en
riching the vocation he has chosen and by
no means impoverishing himself. Begin
ing with nothing, he cannot have cleared
less than 20,000 in the last six years,and
his income must now be at least $5,000
per annum. And this is not all made by
merely talking and writing about farming,
but in good part by actual work. For ex
ample: He last year bought ten' acres of
naturally good but exhausted and weedy
land adjoining him for $250 per acre, pul
verized and fertilized it thoroughly to the
depth of two feet, planted it with cab
bages as close together as they coull grow,
and by the sale of his first crop paid for
the manure, labor and land, having the
latter all clear at the year's end, and in far
better condition than when he bought.
Can any enemy of 'book-farming' beat
this? Or is there any of them who would
not like to know exactly how this land was
fertilized and tilled, even though he should
be obliged to read it in a book or periodi
cal? ;:; : ' : ' '
Let me next illustrate the importance
and advantages of the careful Analysis of
Soils: ' '' '
A friend bought, one year ago,: a small
farm which had previously been uuder
decent or ordinary cultivation, but which,
it appears, had been for many years main
ly fertilized with Gypsum or Plaster of
Paris
an excellent thing in its place, and
which had doubtless done the land
good
service.. But the new farmer's brother is
a thorough Chemist, devoting much at
tention to Agriculture; and he was invited
to analyze the soil of this farm with a view
to its prospective and economical improve
ment. Careful analysis showed a signal
deficiency of lime, but a superabundance
of sulphur and other ingredients-of plas
ter. Of course, at each successive appli
cation of plaster t the plants took up the
lime only, leaving all the residue to lie in
ert in the soil; and so the old farmer had
for years been feeding his soil, at the rate
of twenty to thirty cents per bushel, with
the requisite lime brought from a distance
in the form of plaster, while there was
far better lime burned 11 around him,
and for . sale in abundance at six ceflts a
bushel! The less thus incurred may have
averaged fifty dollars per annuni all for
want of an analysis that might have cost
ten' to twenty dollars. And there are tens
of thousand to-day farming just as blind
ly as did this old farmer.
Can there be any rational wonder that
farmers seldom grow rich by such farming?
How is a wise and judicious economy of
means to be attained if ignoranee and
waste are to reap the rewards properly due
only to intelligence and frugality? If I
were to buy paper and other materials
used in my basiness as carelessly and
blindly as this old farmer bought manures
and fertilized his land, I could not contin
ue to print papers for a single year. Wiser,
more prudent, more intelligent publishers,
would undersell and supplant me, and I
must fail and be driven into some vocation
where ignorance, heedlessness and un
thrift secure the rewards designed by
providence for intelligence, industry and
economy. , :
But let us pause at that word Industry.
"By Industry we thrive," is an old saw,
which is very well in its place; but the
truth contained in proverbs is so curtly ex
pressed that it often misleads more than it
directs. Industry is indeed essential to
thrift, and farmers, like other men, often
need to be reminded of it. When I note
one who is overwhelmed with "business,"
which calls him away from home two or
three days in each week, and keeps him
hanging about the tavern or store while
his boys are at play and his potatoes cry
ing for the hoe, I know whither that far
mer is tending, and can guess about how
long he will have any land to mismanage.
And I think that, in the average, farmers
w aste more hours than machines. They
have more idle time not necessarilv, but
quite commonly so regarded through
bad weather, severe cold, too much wet,
&c. than falls to the lot of almost any oth
er class; and it is very easy to allure many
of them away to shoot at other men's tur-
kies when they should be growing food for
their own. But while many waste pre
cious hours, quite as much through heed;
lessness and want of system as indolence.
I know another class who slave themselves
out of comfort and out df thought by in
cessant, excessive drugery, who are so
absorbed in obtaining the means of liying
that they never find time to live who
drive throug the day so that their bones
and their minds are foggy at night; and
are so overworked through the'Veek that
they can neither worship God nor enjoy
the society of their families on the Sab
bath. These men .will often tell you thev
have ?2o time to read, which is just as ra
tional as for the captain of a steamship to
plead a want of time to consult his com
pass and chart or keep a reckoning of his
ship's progress. No time to read! do
they not find time to plant and sow, to
reap and mow, and even to eat and slee-p?
If they do, then they may 1 find time if
they will, to learn how to apply their la
bor to the best advantage as well Sis to
qualify themselves by rest and refresh
ment for working at all. I venture the
assertion that there are twenty thousand
farmers in Indiana who would have been
wealthier as well as more useful, more ic
spected and happier men this day,' if they
had abstracted ten hours per, week from
labor during all their adult life, and de
voted those hours to reading and thought,
in part with a view to improvement in their
own vocation, but in part also looking to
higher and nobler ends than even this.
Some men waste the better part of their
lives in dissipation and idleness; but this
does not excuse in others the waste of time
equally precious in mere animal effort to
heap up goods and comforts which we
must leave behind so soon and forever.
I can read very few old books I
can hardly find time to master the best
new ones; but I have no doubt that those
who do read the very oldest treasties on
Agriculture which, have survived the rav
ages of time, will find Cato, or Seneca, or
Columella, or whoever may be the author
in hand, talking to the farmers of his day
very much as our farmers are now gene
rally talked to, and inculcating substan
tially the same truths: "Plow deeper, fer
tilize more thoroughly, cultivate less land,
and cultivate it better" such, I have no
doubt, has been the burden of Agricul
tural admonition and exhortation from
the days of Homer and Moses. It seems
increditable to modern ; skepticism that
millions of Hebrews could have for ages
inhabited the narrow and rocky land of
Judea; and it would be hard to believe, if
we were ignorant of the Agrarian law of
Moses, . under which, as popolation in
creased, the inalienable patrimony of each
family became smaller and smaller, and
and the cultivation of course better and
better. Very few of us are at all aware
of the capacity, of an arable acre, if sub
jected to thorough scientific culture.
Many a family of four or five persons has
derived a generous subsistence for year
after year from a single acre. The story
of a farmer who was compelled to sell off
half his little estate of eight or ten acres,
and was most agreeably surprised by find
ing the reward of his labor, quite as large
when it was restricted to the remaining
half as when it was bestowed on the whole
was very current in Roman literature two
thousand years ago. Why is it that men
persist in rnnning over much land,
instead of thoroughly cultating a little,
defying not only Science, but Experience,
the wisdom of the fireside as well as that
of the laboratory, can only b accounted
for by supposing that men have a natural
passion for annexation, a pride in extend
ed dominion, or else a natural repugnance
to following good advice. Surely, if wis
dom ever cried in the streets, she has
been bawling herself hoarse these twenty
five centures against the folly of maintain
ing fences and paying taxes on a hundred
acres of land in order to grow a crop that
might have been produced from ten.
But the sinners against light and knowl
edge in our day nave far less excuse than
their remote ancestors, or even their own
grandfathers. ' It was always well to urge
deep plowing and the like; but so long as
the plow was but a forked log or stick,
with one prong . sharpened for a coulter,
and the other employed as abeam, it was
lardly possible to plow thoroughly. . In
our day, however,the advance from wood-
plows through iron points and iron
mold-boards, to iron plows, steel points,
steel plows, and subsoiling, lias been so
signal and dicisive' that the shiftless creat
ure who with his two lean ponies skims
and skins over the fields he ought either
to Cultivate or let alone, scratching their
surface mildly to a depth of three or four
inches, sins against such an array of
light and knowledge that he is far less ex
cusable than his ancestors who did not
pretend to plow at all, but stuck in a seed
here and there as the could easiest find a
hole or make one, and trusted to Provi
dence to give them an undeserved return
for their spiritless and frivolous ef
forts. -
The three main features of Agricultu
ral advancement among the Anglo-Saxon
race now a-days are: 1. deep plowing, or
Sub-Soiling; 2. Draining; 3. Irrigation.
am quite aware ' that draining should
take precedence in the order of time, yet
believe, in point of fact, deep plowing has
led to draining, by demonstrating its ne
cessity, and not draining to deep plowing,
We suffer immensely from drouth in this
country.' Probably the aggregate annual
loss from drouth alone throughout tl
Union decidedly exceeds, taking one year
with another, the entire cost of our Fede
ral Government. Yet we know that the
roots of Snost plahtswill descend to mois-
lure, no matter now ary me suriace, u
the earth beneath them is porous, mellow
and inviting. Hence we realize the im
portance of deep plowing; and, after
doubling our teams and sinking our deep
est plows to the beam, we summon to our
aid the sub-soil implement, and go down a
depth beyond that of a single furrow.;
But we soon find that the pulverization of
the sub-soil, thus attained,, has no per
manent effect; that the water that leaches
down to it settles it into a compact, solid
mass; which the roots cannot perforate;
and all our sub-soilling needs to be done
over again. The remedy that readily
suggests itself is the freeing of the sub-
soil from water by drains sunk below it,
three to six rods apart, and filled half-way
up with pebbles, with flat stone forming
a sort of culvert, or, still better, laid with
drainjng-tile or hollow brick, placed end
to end, :and forming a continuous channel
from the highest part of any slope or
grade to the brook which drains it. And
now the sub-soil, supposing the drains
well made and the drainageway sufficient,
is readily freed from any water settlingin
to it, and long retains the porous and per
meable character communicated to it by
deep plowing. . -
Of course, this does not exhaust the
good effects of draining. The sub-soil,
thus loosened and freed from excessive
moisture, becomes a source of food as well
as brink to the plants growing above it;
for that it is capable of feeding plants, no
one, who has observed the rank vegeta
tion growing out of the earth thrown up
by draining or digging, can doubt. In
stead of being like a slough in wet weath
er and like a brick in dry, the sub-soil re
tains sufficient moisture to cheer the plants
but too little to indurate itself. And the
mean temperature of the soil, hitherto low
ered by the constant evaporation of the
water contained in the sub-soil, is raised
several degrees by the sun's rays, no
longer counteracted by the evaporating
Pprocess, at least, not to any such extent
as before so that the plants grow more
luxuriantly, mature more rapidly, and so
are earlier out of danger from frost. And
beside this, the constant passage of cur
rents of air through that portion of the
drain not occupied by water, and each
drain should have an opening at its head
as well as its mouth is an additional
source of fertility through the chemical
combination it insures. It would be dif
ficult to overstate the value, the impor
tance, the profit of draining.
Many are accustomed to say, "This
land needs no "draining;" means that it
is not habitually to wet. But draining
proves as useful, if it is not as impera
tively necessary, on dry soils as on wet.
On dry lands it is required that the sub
soil, once broken up and pulverized, shall
not, by the settling of moisture therein du
ring the wet season, be hardened and ren
dered impervious again; these lands need
to be rendered porous and penetra
ble by roots to a greater depth because of
their dryness; they need to be shielded
from the pernicious of constant evapora
tion in cooling the soil, and thus retarding
the growth of its plants. There is very
much land not worth tilling; but there is
none that will justify tillage which would
not reward draining.
Of Irrigation, we in. this country
know very little by experience; but we
are destined soon to know more, and to
be profited by our knowledge. True,
there are lands that may be readily drain
ed and sub-soiled that cannot so readily
be irrigated, owing to their elevation and
a deficient supply of water. I apprehend
however, that those lands are not to be
found in Indiana, nor in any other Prairie
State, whose first peculiarities that strike
a stranger are a superabundance of water
in the rair.y season and a scarctty thereof
in the dry. The time is at hand when
you here require extensive- and powerful
pumping, apparatus, if only to raise wa
ter for your heavy stocks of cattle andcon
vey it to the pastures wherein they will be
confined; and why not raise enough of
the grateful fluid to refresh pastures and
cattle alike ?
, But even though this assured and am
ple resource were non-existent, I maintain
that water enough falls on your fields eve
ry year,to keep them luxuriant through
the summer, if it were saved and not
wasted. ; But most of it falls during the
seasons when least is wanted, ana
is suffered to run off to the rivers
and the ocean, carry very much of the
best juices of the soil along with it, when
it should be retained in ponds and reser
voirs to be pumped into barn -yards or
drawn off to irrigate the fields during the
fervid heats of summer. The apparent
difficulty of doing this would vanish and
the presumed expense be materially less
ened on careful consideration.
I know not that I have traversed any
country with more lively interest than
beautiful, bountiful, picturesque Lombar
dy. . The dark pall of Austrian despotism
enveloping it did not suffice to dim its na
tural loveliness and luxuriance, so great
ly improved by the labor and genius of
Man. It seems to have grown into its
system of almost universal irrigation by
imperceptible and unmarked degrees, and
to be now producing double harvests an
nually as the result of some fortuitous im
pulse rather than of foresight and delib
erate calculation. The magnificent plain
of Upper Italy, which has for so many
centuries been the field of combat where
Goth and Latin, Frank and -Hun, Gaul
and German, have struggled for the mas
tery of Europe, slopes almosUmpercepti
bly from the Alps to the Po, and the im
petuous torrents which tear -the rocky
sides of the snow-crowned precipices are
arrested aud chastened in the blue Lakes
which lie at the foot of the mountains,
smiling serenely out upon the plain. '
1 nence the waters . proceed , with a
more gentle and measured cadence to the
great river, and are drawn off and stayed
irom point to pomi to nu the irria-atinu'
canals and ensure a rich reward to the
husbandman's labors.. Let any stream
from heavy rains become a . raging, foam
ing, milky . torrent, and its waters have a
value . which the pure element could not
command, and are drown off on every side
until the canals and reservoirs are filled
and all danger of inundation precluded.
Thus the waters are most valuable for ir
rigation' just when they are most easily
and abundantly obtainable for that pur
pose. The water which has irrigated one
fertile garden or field, far from being ex
hausted, has been rendered more nourish
ing thereby, and may now be drawn off to
fertilize the next field lying an inch or so
lower, and thence to the nexf, and
so on, unreservedly, to the riyer, enrich--,
ing and gladdening all it touches on its
way. -r Irrigation is the life-bjood of Lom-
bardy; shall it be nothing, teach nothing,
to us? . : '' ' -;
If there be a country on earth which
one would suppose irrigation unsuited to,
Great Britain is that country. Her ex
ceedingly moist, cool climate, coupled with
her compact, day subsoil (not universal,
but very extensive) would seem to render
a deficiency of moisture one of the very
last evils to be apprehended or guarded
against in her Agriculture., And yet her
best farmers are now embarking rapidly
and extensively in Irrigation, finding it
practicable and immensely . profitable. -
Not here, as in Lombardy, is the natural
flow of the streams, in their descent from
the hills to the rivers, relied on; but great
pumps are employed, raising water by
steam or other power from livers, brooks
and ponds, to' a bight whence it is carried
by gravitation through metallic and gutta-percha
pipes to every point where it is
needed. -Mr. Mechi, the ex-London mer
chant, who retired from trade with a com
petency to earn another by scientific far
ming, takes the lead in this application,
and his estimates of the increased pro
ductiveness of lands by reason of irriga
tion and the profits thus secured would
seem wild to any audience unfamiliar with
the subject. I may state, however, that
he fixes the expense of conveying his
manures in a liquid form from his yard to
every portion of his estate as equivalent to
one penny sterling or two cents per cart
load that is to say, the fertilizing prop
erties which were contained in a tun of
muck or compost are now conveyed to the
soil that requires them at the cost of one
penny. That loading, teaming, unload
ing and spreading in the old way . must
have cost far more than this, you cannot
doubt; and beside, the fertilizing liquid,
being free from seeds or weedy germs of
any kind, and in a condition to be readily
and totally absorbed by plants, must be
worth twice as much as if applied in the
old way. Now consider that this load of
manure has been conveyed through and
applied with many tuns of water, just
when the soil is most thirsty, and the
plants most needy, and you can readily
judge that the tun of manure dissolved in
water and applied through irrigating
pipes at the cost of a penny, must be
worth at least thrice as much as the same
tun applied in the crude, solid state, at a
cost of not less than thrice that sum.
But I must not dwell on details. You
have the general idea, and can follow it
out at your leisure into all its necessary
results.
III. What the sister arts teach as to
Agriculture may be fairly summed up in
this proposition:
The workman should be completely
master of his materials and his imple
ments. He should first thoroughly un
derstand, in order that he may in the next
place thoroughly control, the elements
from which he is to evolve value and sus
tenance. He who should undertake to
build a ship, in ignorance of the relative
tenacity and resistance to pressure of
the various woods and metals, would rush
into a pursuit for which he had no capac
ity; so would he who should undertake
the running of a steam-engine in ignor
ance of the nature and power of steam.
Yet the man who attempts to farm with an
imperfect knowledge of the nature and
properties of soils in general, of the laws
of Vegetation, the qualities and peculiar
ties of the particular soils whereof his
farm is composed, and the cheapest means
of renovating and increasing their fertili
ty and productiveness, stands on the same
platform with the ignorant shipwright or
engineer, and braves like disasters, where
of the largest share will naturally fall to
himself and his family. Agriculture is a
pursuit so vast in its scope, so various in
its processes and objects, that it is difficult
to lay down a general rule with regard to
it that will admit of no exceptions; yet I
will venture to propound one, which is as
follows: The cultivator whose farm is not
more valuable and more productive as one
results of each year's tillage, does not un
derstand his vocation, and ought to learn
it or quit it.
Perhaps there is no single field 6f ob
servation wherein the extent and disas
trous effects of ignorance among farmers
more strikingly exhibited than in that of
Insect Life and Ravages: It has pleased
the All-wise to subject" Agriculture to the
chances and perils of insect depredations,
as well as to weeds, drouth, frost, inun
WHOLE NO; 410.
dation, and. other evils. .The end of all
these, is beneficence the , evolution and
discipline of man's Capacities throtfgh.tlwv
necessary counteraction ..and combats-
Plants, and domestic . animals rightfully,
look to owner for, efficient protection; and
and he who allows his sheep to be kUledl,
by wolves, his fowls to be .carried, off.bjfc'
insects, is culpably faithless to his depen-.
dents and its duty. Yet how listlessly,,
thoughtlessly, hopelessly, do - we see far '
mersf 6tand by while their crops are de-.
stroyed by worms, birds, orweevil, with
out seeming to know that they have
anything to do in the premises? No Tur
kish fatalism is blinder or blanker than
theirs. It is hardly yet six weeks since I
saw wfcole countries of my own State cov
ered and devastated by grasshoppers, who
stripped the dry uplands of every blade of
grass, almost every, green leaf, cutting
the green oats from their stalks, the fruit
from the trees, devouring corn in the ear,
making the cleared a desert, and pushing
the cattle to the very verge of starvation.
Yet there, stood the farmers,' gazing
gloomily from day to day at the destruc
tion of their cherished hopes of a harvest
and the utter desolation of the whole
country, yet not one asking of another,'
"What" shall we do to arrest this sweep
ing ravage ? How shall we most read-'
ily, cheaply and surely clear our lands
of these vermin?" I do not pretend I to
know what the proper remedy was or isr
but I do know, that, had J been one of
these farmers, I would have found a rem
edy or bankrupted myself in the search.
I should have first interrogated the be6t
authorities on Agriculture and Natural
History, and, in case of finding no guid
ance there, I should have sowed one acre
of my land bountifully with Salt; the;
next with plaster; .the next perhaps with
Nitre; a fourth with potash; and 60 on,
using in all cases substances that I knew
would be paid for by future harvests, un
less I had reason to believe something else
would be more efficient. Thus; before,
one week had elasped, . I would haver
found some caustic that grasshoppers
could not abide; and having found it, I
would have applied it, till the last cormor
ant among them had been driven into the
woods or turned over on his back. And this
is the spirit in which such invasion should
be met and and overcome. Had the far
mers of any township promptly met,
when the ravage first became serious and
agreed that one of them would try one
possible antidote and another, according
as they happened respectively to have the
material at" command, and meet a few
evenings later to compare notes on the re
mits of their several experiments, they .
could not have failed to discover an effi
cient remedy within the first week. , . But
they did nothing; and hence many of
their farms are a desert, their fall crops,
next to nothing, and half there cattle must
be sold for want of food. . '
Our farmers generally think and work
better out of their own vocation than in
it. A distant and towering evil arouses,
their hostility and evokes their energy
much more readily than one of a less im
posing but more mischievous character
which assails them" in . their homes. Let
the word go forth, "An army of invaders
have landed!" and tens of, thousands
snatch instinctively their muskets and
take the road; but here are armies all a
round thenv who. are plundering them"
who are plundering them worse than any
invader would, yet hardly attract their no
tice. The Hessians who were , hired ' to
to subjugate "our fathers had no rest for
their feet until the last of them was killed
captured or hunted home, more than 6evT
enty years ago; yet their attendant para
site, the Hessian Fly, has been plunder
ing us ever since without resistance, and
is now as formidable and destructive as
ever. I cannot believe flies more difficult
to conquer than men, if we would but
fairly set about it.
IV. And here let me retrace my steps
to illustrate a point in Industrial Economy
which I have already incidentally touched
but have not illustrated as its importance
deserves and as the prevailing misconcep
tions render necessary. I refer to The
Proportion of Means to Ends, which the
Artisan must always bear in mind, but
which the Farmer seems too often to for
get. No artificer presumes that the labor
and meterial required for a fine table will
suffice for a piano-forte; nor that a steam
engine can be constructed as cheaply as a
churn. But the farmer, seeing trees and
plants, grow around him with weed-like
facility and tenacity, often indolently im
agines' that any tree will grow so, and
plants his rare and delicate fruit-trees, if
he plant such at all, as if they were oaks
and locusts. But nature is inexorable in
her requirement that the labor and care
essential to the production of a choice
fruit or plant shall be proportionatejto the
product. You may grow pine on yellow
sand or hickory on blue clay; but if you
want choice pears or peaches you must
devote much labor and expense to prepar
ing and enriching the ground wherein
your trees are to.be set. Too many farm
ers, not heeding this law, or supposing
that nature may somehow be circumvent
ed, obtain worthless fruit or none at all,
and so abandon the culture in disgust and
despair. ' ... I - ;:
There is not now one grape-vine or fruit
tree, except of the coarsest and common
est kinds, where there should be twenty,
taking one State with' another; and one
Concluded on fourth page.
I
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