a in the soil, is to grow such
crops, in rotation with wheat culture, as will best prevent the loss
of dissolved flint, at any time by leaching and washing, through the
agency of rain water. This remark is intended to apply more
particularly to those large districts devoted to cotton and tobacco
culture, plants that take up no considerable amount of silica, and
which by the constant stirring of the earth, and the clean tillage
which they demand, favor the leaching of the soil. To keep too much
of a plantation of these crops, is to lessen its capabilities for
producing good crops of corn, wheat, and barley, at a small expense.
Corn plants, well managed, will extract more pounds of silica in
three or six months from the soil, than any other. As not an ounce
of this mineral is needed in the animal economy of man or beast, it
can all be composted in cornstalks, blades, and cobs, or in the dung
and urine derived from corn, and be finally reorganized in the stems
of wheat plants. Corn culture and wheat culture, if skilfully and
scientifically conducted, go admirably together. Of the two, more
bread, more meat, and more _money_ can be made from the corn than
from the wheat plant in this country. But so soon as what is called
"high farming" in England, shall be popular in the United States,
the crops both of wheat and corn grown here will demonstrate how
little we appreciate the vast superiority of our climate for the
economical feeding and clothing of the human family, over that of
our "mother country." In several counties in England, it takes from
twelve to fourteen months to make a crop of wheat, after the seed is
put into the ground. At or near the first of December, 1847, Mr.
M.B. Moore, of Augusta, Ga., sowed a bushel of seed wheat on an acre
and a half of ground, which gave him over thirty bushels by the
middle of May following. This ground was then ploughed, and a fine
crop of hay made and cut in July. After this, a good crop of peas
was raised, and harvested in October, before it was time to seed
with wheat again, as was done. While the mean temperature of England
is so low, that corn plants will not ripen, in Georgia one can grow
a crop of wheat in the winter, and nearly two crops of corn in
succession in the summer and autumn, before it is time to sow wheat
again. No writer, to my