In Monroe county, the richest land in the State of New York, estimating the land at fifteen dollars per acre, the producing cost stood at:—­

Dollars.  Cents. 
Interest at six per cent. 0 45
One ploughing sward, cover or stubble 1 00
Harrowing, furrowing, seed, and planting 0 871/2
Cultivating three times and hoeing 1 00
Husking the hill 1 00
Shelling and cleaning 1 00
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5 821/2

This yielded fifty bushels, the cost of producing the bushel was eleven and three-fifths cents.  This low cost was owing to the fact of no manure being used; and while it speaks volumes as to the natural fertility of American soils, yet it reflects very disgracefully upon the careless system adopted there, as under such treatment no land could continue, after some years, to produce a crop which could come into competition with those from newer and less exhausted lands; but if under a good system of tillage the ground was yearly renewed with manure, and those amendments which every soil requires, after a crop has been raised from it, added to the soil in top-dressing and in ploughing-in, we should never hear of the exhausted state of New England land, or see the sons of the soil moving west and cultivating newer soils, thus removing much of the capital and intelligence of a country away from it.

Supposing the corn of Monroe county sold at seventy cents per bushel, the balance would appear thus:—­

Dollars.  Cents. 
Fifty bushels, at seventy cents 35 00
Cost of production 5 821/2
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Gain 29 181/2

L6 1s. per acre profit.

In Northern Ohio and in Illinois the cost of production averages twenty cents per bushel.

The mode of cultivation in Connecticut and the New England States has been thus described to me by Mr. L. Durand, an experienced agriculturist:—­If the soil selected is light and mellow, it should be ploughed and subsoiled in the spring, first spreading on the coarse unfermented manure which is to be ploughed in.  For marking the rows for planting, a “corn marker” may be used to advantage.  It is made by taking a piece of scantling, three inches square and ten to twelve feet long, with teeth of hickory or white oak inserted at distances of two to four feet, according to the width designed for the rows.  Then an old pair of waggon-thills and a pair of old plough-handles are put to it, and your marker is done.  With a good horse to draw this implement, the ground may be made ready for planting very rapidly.  It is better to leave the ground flat than to ridge it, for the latter mode has no advantage, except when the ground is wet.  The difference in the two modes is chiefly this:—­When