asts toil and
sweat, cultivating thirty acres for the amount of produce that should
grow, may grow, can grow, and has grown on ten acres?

The poorest, most forsaken side-hills, cobble-hills, and knolls, if the
sand or gravel be of moderate depth, underlaid by a subsoil rather
retentive, by turning under green crops grow potatoes of the first
quality. If land be so poor that clover will not take, as is sometimes
the case, seed to clover with millet very early in the spring, and
harrow in with the millet thirty bushels of wood-ashes, or two hundred
pounds of guano per acre; then sow the clover-seed one peck per acre;
brush it in.

If neither ashes nor guano can be obtained at a reasonable price, sow
two hundred pounds of gypsum per acre as soon as the bushing is
completed. This will not fail in giving the clover a fair foothold on
the soil.

Before the millet blossoms, cut and cure it for hay. Keep all stock off
the clover, plaster it the following spring, plow it under when in full
bloom; sow buckwheat immediately; when up, sow plaster; when in full
bloom, plow under and sow the ground immediately with rye, to be plowed
under the next May. Thus three crops are put under within a year, the
ground is left strong, light, porous, free from weeds, ready to grow a
large crop of potatoes, or almost any thing else.

Much is gained every way by having and keeping land in a high state of
fertility. Some crops require so long a season for growth, that high
condition of soil is absolutely necessary to carry them through to
maturity in time to escape autumnal frosts. In the Western States manure
has hitherto been considered of but little value. The soil of these
States was originally very rich in humus. For a time wheat was produced
at the rate of forty bushels per acre; but according to the statistics
given by the Agricultural Department at Washington, for the year 1866,
the average yield in some of these States was but four and a half
bushels per acre. It is evident from this that Mr. Skinflint has had
things pretty much his own way. His land now produces four and a half
bushels per acre; what time shall elapse when it shall be four and one
half acres per bushel? Who dare predict that manure will not at some day
be of value west of the Alleghanies? New-Jersey, with a soil naturally
inferior to that of Illinois, contains extensive tracts that yearly
yield over one hundred bushels of Indian corn per acre, while the
average of t