of the land begin to fail, the supply must be drawn from other quarters than an exhausted field, or its cultivator will receive a poor return for the labor bestowed.

In Great Britain, where the necessity for liberal harvests and artificial fertilizing is far greater than in this country, the yield of wheat is said to be governed in a good degree by the amount of ammonia available as food for growing plants.  This opinion is founded not at all on theory, but altogether on the teachings of experience.  But in England, limeing and manuring are so much matters of constant practice, that few soils are so improverished as many are in the United States, With land as naked and sterile as is much that can be found in the whole thirteen colonies between Maine and Alabama, English farmers could hardly pay their tithes and poor rates, to say nothing of other taxes, rent, and the coat of producing their annual crops.

    The first step towards making farming permanently profitable in all
    the older States, is to accumulate in a cheap and skilful manner the
    raw material for good harvests in the soil.

Over a territory so extensive as the United States, it is extremely difficult to lay down any rule that will be applicable even to a moiety of the republic.  There are, however, many beds of marl, greensand, gypsum, limestone, saline and vegetable deposits available for the improvement of farming lands, in the Union.  In addition to these, there are extraneous resources, the ocean with its fish, its shells, its sea-weeds, and its fertilizing salts, which will yield an incalculable amount of bread and meat.  In the subsoil and the atmosphere, every agriculturist has resources which are not duly appreciated by one in a thousand.

As a general rule, the soil must be deepened before it can be permanently improved.  One acre of soil 12 inches deep is worth more to make money from, by cultivating it, than four acres 6 inches in depth.  Thus, admit that a soil 6 inches deep will produce 14 bushels of wheat, and that 12 bushels will pay all expenses and give 2 for profit.  Four acres of this land will yield a net income of only 8 bushels.  Now double the depth of the soil and the crop:  making the latter 28 bushels, instead of 14 per acre, and the former 12 inches deep, in the place of 6.  Fifteen bushels instead of twelve, will now pay all annual expenses, and leave a net profit not of two but of thirteen bushels per acre.  If small crops will pay expenses, large ones will make a fortune; provided the farmer knows how to enrich his land in the most economical way.  It is quite as easy to pay too dear for improving lands, as to lose money at any other business whatever.

The first thing for the operator to do is to acquire all the knowledge within his reach, from the experience of others who have done for their soils what he proposes to accomplish for