Our farmers and cattle owners may urge that the climate and soil of Maine, the value of lands, and so forth, preclude the adoption of a system so radically differing from our prevailing mode, however plausible it may appear from data drawn from the customs adopted by the force of circumstances, in the densely peopled countries of Europe. It is my purpose to furnish for your use, a few pages, in which I shall aim to present this subject fairly, and as fully as my limited time and the opportunities at hand may allow. The facts and the reasonings of farmers of this country, and in Europe, will be presented in brief, with the hope that they may attract attention, and lead many to adopt this mode, fully or partially, at once.

I have some personal experience in this matter. For the last eight years, I have, as a farmer, occupied but a few acres, unproductive at first,-and have kept two cows and a horse, and for a part of the time, three cows and two horses; and during the whole of this time, my cattle have not for a single week obtained their full living by pasturage; and for the most part of each summer, but a small portion of it.

Having thus partially adopted the soiling system in my own practice, I have been led to examine and inquire into its practical workings elsewhere. What I have here accomplished, on the soil, and under the climate of Maine, is to me reliable data for future operations, and has enabled me to draw just conclusions, touching the theory and practice of those whose operations have been laid open to the public.

The system, like the progress of abiding truth, has, almost silently, for a long time, been working its way into favor in many localities over our extended country. In the valley of the Connecticut, and some other rivers, it is much practiced, from the circumstance that the broad intervales are annually denuded of all fences by the floods. The advocates of soiling, claim to have established the truth of these six propositions :

4th. The better condition and greater comfort of the cattle.

5th. The greater product of milk.

6th. The attainment of manure.

To offset these advantages, we have the labor of raising and cutting the food, and the feeding and care of the stock.*

1st. The saving of land. This is a fact established by concurrent testimony everywhere. To what extent this saving has been carried, we will show by introducing a few witnesses. Quincy says:

European writers assert that the saving which results, is as one to three; others say, as one to seven. Others still, that the saving is yet greater; that is, one acre kept for soiling, will go as far as three or seven, or more, kept for pasture, in the support of stock. On farms where the whole soil is capable of being plowed, the economy of soiling is great.

It may be, however, useful to observe that the reason for the diversity of statement, in relation to the degree of saving, results from the different ways in which the land used for soiling is cultivated for the purpose of raising food. Some satisfy themselves with enriching the former pasture, and cutting the grass it produces, for the soiling use. Others plow up the pasture; raise cabbages, or other succulent food, on which they support their stock. Now it is plain, the result of a comparison of saving of land made between an acre of enriched pasture, and an acre appropriated to the latter of these modes of husbandry, must be very different. In either case, the economy is sufficiently great."

The maximum product of an acre of land has nowhere yet been determined. The amounts obtained, often surprise us.

From the reports of a committee of the British Parliament, showing the condition of small farmers, we find much of interest in the results from exact and high cultivation, and much that bears directly on the above proposition.

In one case, of a man who held an allotment of four acres; in one year, he obtained forty-two bushels of wheat, two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes, and ten bushels of barley; and kept two cows

*In my search for reading, I found a small volume of Essays from the pen of the Hon. Josiah Quincy, of Boston, published the present year, in which he has clearly summed up the principal facts and reasonings of European farmers, and detailed his own experience in a practice of the system for twenty years; keeping, a part of the time, from thirty to thirty-five milk cows. I am under great obligation to the venerable author, in behalf of the farmers of Maine, for such extracts from his Essays as I have adopted, as being better adapted to our condition and wants than anything I have found written elsewhero. C. C.

and four pigs. The cows were kept entirely on the products of the four acres. A portion of this was not arable, as some trees were growing upon it. An inquiry was made of the occupant of a small allotment, "how t was possible to keep two cows, and maintain a family of five persons, on only three acres of land." He answered, "The statement you saw was very true: half an acre of pasture, half an acre and eight rods in wheat, and one quarter of an acre in oats; the other part was green food for the cows; such as rye, tares, cabbages, clover, mangolds, turnips and Italian ryegrass." Then follows in minute detail, the mode of culture; and he then says, "I hope it now appears how the cows are maintained in winter as well as in summer. During last winter, I had no hay; only turnips, mangolds, and straw; and they did very well."

This is a pretty strong case; where it is shown that two cows were kept the whole year on the produce of eight rods less than one and three fourths acres of land, with only the addition of a half acre of pasture, and the straw from four fifths of an acre of grain, abating the vegetables consumed from the same land, by a family of five persons.

In a communication to the British Board of Agriculture, it is stated that thirty cows, one bull, four calves and five horses, were fed through the summer, from fifteen acres of clover, sown the preceding year. The labor of four persons was sufficient to tend them; and the net produce of the season, in butter, from June to October, was £19.10s.-over ninety-five dollars per cow. Forty animals to fifteen acres, gives sixty square rods (three eighths of an acre) to each. Sixty square rods in clover producing a net income of over ninety-five dollars!

On this point, Quincy writes, "It is now six years since I commenced the soiling system; and no consideration would induce me to abandon it. Every year brings new convictions of its facility and its productiveness. If farmers would be persuaded to commence the system upon a small scale, with one or two head of cattle, they would gradually become acquainted with it; success would inspire confidence, until, enlarging the number of cattle soiled, they might, in time, easily keep one head per year, for every acre of land they possess. Greater than this would be the ultimate result of the system, if wisely conducted.”

After twelve years experience with the system, Mr Quincy writes, "From my own experience, I do not hesitate to state that three cows may be kept during the summer season, in full milk and in high condition, on a single acre."

From an account of the inspection of farms by the St. Quivox Club, Ayrshire, Scotland, we read: "About fourteen years ago, Mr. Ralston sowed a five acre field with a variety of meadow grasses, and laid down the land in the proper form for irrigation with the liquid manure of the farm-yard diluted with water, of which he has a sufficient supply. It has been done at a small cost, and has paid extremely well. In good years, he has taken as much as sixty tons of grass from an acre of land; and during the present season, the field has kept thirty cattle and sixteen horses since the third of May." This account was dated August 7th. This field may have been reckoned as Scotch acres, which are somewhat larger than ours.

Adam Anthony of North Providence, R. I., entered upon a farm in 1826, of the extent of seventy-two acres, suitable for tillage. The land was very sandy; and the crops of that year were five tons of hay, two tons of oats, two hundred bushels of potatoes, two hundred of turnips, some fruit and garden vegetables; worth, including pasture feed, three hundred eighty-five dollars. He adopted the soiling system. In 1847, he reports the produce of the farm as two hundred tons, by estimate, of green fodder for soiling, one hundred tons of hay, twenty-five tons of millet, seventeen tons of dry corn fodder, six hundred forty bushels of potatoes, seven hundred fifty bushels of Indian corn, fruit and garden vegetables, the value of which, is three thousand five hundred seventy-five dollars; nearly ten fold increase in the products of the farm. The stock consists of about forty head, of which thirty-six are usually cows.

Similar testimony might be very much extended, but it is unnecessary. My own experience corroborates the usual statements to be met with on this point.

2d. The saving of fencing. The present American system of farming involves a prodigious expenditure of human energy for fencing. I have seen it estimated that the cost of fences in these United States is more than six hundred millions of dollars, (600,000,000.) Whether more or less than this enormous sum, it is so much invested in human toil, a large portion of which might have been saved and

applied to better and more ennobling purposes, had our early system of customs and laws been what they ultimately must be.

It has been estimated from well considered data, that the labor involved in fencing in some of the States, is greater than that in the erection of all the buildings, including all the cities and towns.

Having worked as boy and man, in helping clear and fence a farm, till the aggregate of its fences of wood and stone, extended to six or seven miles, I may be allowed to speak feelingly regarding this incubus on the farmer's prosperity.

One-half of all farm fences are interior; and aside from an occasional necessity for making a permanent distinction between arable land and a piece that nature designed for a pasture, they are worse

than useless.

Adopt a single principle, that no beast shall be permitted to range on lands adapted to the plow and the scythe, and you are prepared to wipe off from the face of our fair country, much that disfigures it, and abolish, at once and forever, a vast item in your annual taxation.

The most false of anything that assumes the name of economy, is the practice of pasturing mowing-lands. Interior fences, that were erected, and are maintained for the sole purpose of enabling the proprietor to pasture his mowing-lands, have cost the farmers of Maine a very large sum. To call in the aid of arithmetic, it will read in this wise: The improved lands in the State may now be set down at two and a half millions of acres, (2,500,000.) Taking the estimate by very good authority,* of ten rods of fence, at one dollar per rod, for each acre of improved land, gives us for fences in the State, the sum of twenty-five millions of dollars ($25,000,000.) Half of this sum, $12,500,000, we will set down for interior fences on farms. It may be fair to assume for annual erections, while the present system continues, for changes and repairs, ten per cent of this sum, or one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, ($1,250,000) which the farmers of the State are annually paying as a direct tax on their resources, and on which very few have heretofore had the courage to raise their voices in complaint. Impressed with the truthfulness of such estimates, who can for another year remain

* Cumberland Co. Agl. Society. Committee on Farms.