he State is over forty-three; and the average yield of the
same cereal in Illinois is but little over thirty-one bushels per acre.
In the Western States, where potatoes are grown extensively for Southern
markets, the average yield is about eighty bushels per acre; while in
old Pennsylvania could be shown the last year potatoes yielding at the
rate of six hundred and forty bushels per acre. There are those who
argue that manure is never necessary--that plant-food is supplied in
abundance by the atmosphere; it was also once said a certain man had
taught his horse to live without eating; but it so happened that just as
he got the animal perfectly schooled, it died.

Good, thorough cultivation and aeration of the soil undoubtedly do much
toward the production of crops; but mere manipulation is not all that is
needed.

That growing plants draw much nourishment from the atmosphere, and
appropriate largely of its constituents in building up their tissue, is
certainly true; it is also certainly true that they require something of
the soil besides mere anchorage. All facts go to show that if the
constituents needed by the plant from the soil are not present in the
soil, the efforts of the plant toward proper development are abortive?
What sane farmer expects to move a heavy load over a rugged road with a
team so lean and poverty-stricken that they cast but a faint shadow? Yet
is he much nearer sanity when he expects farming to be pleasant and
profitable, and things to _move aright_, unless his land is strong and
fat? Is he perfectly sane when he thinks he can skin his farm year after
year, and not finally come to the bone? The farmer on exhausted land
must of necessity use manure. Manure of _some_ kind must go under, or he
must go under; and to the great mass of cultivators no mode of enriching
is so feasible, so cheap, and attended with such satisfactory results,
as that of plowing under green crops.

The old plan of leaving an exhausted farm, and going West in search of
rich "government land," must soon be abandoned. Already the head of the
column of land-hunters have "fetched up" against the Pacific, and it is
doubtful whether their anxious gaze will discover any desirable
unoccupied soil over its waters.

The writer would not be understood as saying that all farms are
exhausted, or that there is _no_ way of recuperation but by plowing
under green crops. What he wishes understood is, that where poor, sandy,
or gravelly la