ple, ("hold on," said the Deacon,) the
crops of grass as far as the water reached. The Deacon does not seem to
credit this statement; but I have seen wonderful effects produced by
such a plan.

What I am endeavoring to show, is, that these and similar means will
give us larger crops of hay and grass, and these in turn will enable us
to keep more cows, and make more manure, and the manure will enable us
to grow larger crops on other portions of the farm.

I am aware that many will object to plowing up old grass land, and I do
not wish to be misunderstood on this point. If a farmer has a meadow
that will produce two or three tons of hay, or support a cow, to the
acre, it would be folly to break it up. It is already doing all, or
nearly all, that can be asked or desired. But suppose you have a piece
of naturally good land that does not produce a ton of hay per acre, or
pasture a cow on three acres, if such land can be plowed without great
difficulty, I would break it up as early in the fall as possible, and
summer-fallow it thoroughly, and seed it down again, heavily, with grass
seeds the next August. If the land does not need draining, it will not
forget this treatment for many years, and it will be the farmer's own
fault if it ever runs down again.

In this country, where wages are so high, we must raise large crops per
acre, or not raise any. Where land is cheap, it may sometimes pay to
compel a cow to travel over three or four acres to get her food, but we
cannot afford to raise our hay in half ton crops; it costs too much to
harvest them. High wages, high taxes, and high-priced land, necessitate
high farming; and by high farming, I mean growing large crops every
year, and on every portion of the farm; but high wages and _low-priced
land_ do not necessarily demand high farming. If the land is cheap we
can suffer it to lie idle without much loss. But when we _raise_ crops,
whether on high-priced land or on low-priced land, we must raise good
crops, or the expense of cultivating and harvesting them will eat up all
the profits. In the dairy districts, I believe land, in proportion to
its quality and nearness to market, commands a higher price than land in
the grain-growing districts. Hence it follows that high farming should
be the aim of the American dairyman.

I am told that there are farms in the dairy districts of this State
worth from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars per acre, on
which a cow to four a