y observation and
experience have convinced me that he may make such improvement as will
bring him a quick return, and soon enable him to get his farm well set
in grass. This once effected, his facilities for its further improvement
will assuredly increase in a ratio just in proportion as he is careful
to pursue the course indicated. If a farmer can succeed in getting his
fields well set in grass, a large and long array of facts and experience
have proved that he may then, under a judicious course of management,
render them more and more fertile without foreign aid of any kind
whatever."

The editor of the American Farmer, in deprecating the price of guano
says, "Of the efficacy of guano, in restoring worn out lands to
productiveness--of its capacity to increase the yield of any lands in a
sound condition--there cannot be a doubt; but even with all its
regenerating properties, we do think that its market value is too high.
Forty-eight dollars for a ton of 2,000 lbs. of Peruvian guano is more
than it is intrinsically worth, and should it be continued thus high,
must, we should think, limit its use, for the obvious reason, that
farmers cannot afford to pay a price for it which is so disproportionate
to its real value."

Yet they do continue to pay, and make it pay a greater profit than any
other manure ever purchased. We hold to have done as much as any other
individual to reduce the price of guano, and wish as heartily as does
the editor of the Am. Farmer, it was only half the price it now is; yet,
we must counsel our readers not to wait for that cheap time coming. It
is now cheaper than it was then, and probably as low as it will be for
years; and in the hands of the present agents, the public may depend
upon a regular supply, and of genuine quality, at what the Peruvian
government deem a fair price.

_Guano for Melons and other Vines._--Mr. Pleasants, of whom we have
before spoken, and whose long experience in the use of guano in
connection with a market garden, entitle him to a high degree of credit,
says, "I have been in the habit of using it for several years, and can
testify to its value, not only using it for melons, but for the whole
tribe of cucurbitacae. The mode of application which I prefer is this;
when the ground is prepared and checked off, remove the loose soil at
the intersections of the furrows, leaving clear spaces on the substratum
of not less than eighteen inches in diameter. Upon these spaces spr