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own experience with the result of two or three experiments. As early as the year 1827, I became convinced that, in the event of a drouth in summer, the ordinary method and routine of planting corn, in my neighborhood, was ruinous in its results, entailing on the planter the necessity of getting his supply elsewhere than from his own field. Acting from the suggestion derived from books on agriculture, I took for my first experiment a level, much-exhausted red-clay field, which produced not five bushels of corn per acre the preceding year.

About the first of December, I started the work of ploughing and subsoiling with bull-tongue ploughs and an old-fashioned Coulter, running two of the former to one of the latter, thus subsoiling every alternate furrow.

Early in February the field was laid off four feet each way with a seven inch shovel, followed by a subsoil plough. In each check a small shovelful of a compost of cotton seed, stable manure and the scrapings of the lots, was put and covered with a tongue plough. In March the field was planted in corn, the seed having been soaked in a solution of saltpetre, and was covered with hoes to the depth of about two inches. As soon as the plant attained the height of three or four inches it was thoroughly ploughed with tongue ploughs and followed by the hoe hands. It received two other ploughings with short shovels, and was laid by before the tassel appeared. The cultivation was level, rather drawing the earth from, than to the stalk, at the early stage of its growth.

The contrast between this and other fields around, during the hot and dry season, was striking. In this field, the vigorous growth and dark green blades gave but little indication of drouth, while in many fields around, the plant was literally being scorched to dryness.

The product was put down at twenty-five bushels per acre, being a gain of at least twenty bushels per acre over the preceding crop.

From the foregoing experiment we learn the beneficial effect of opening the soil for the reception and retention of moisture during the winter, the better pulverization by freezing, and adaptation of the soil for the ramification of the lateral roots of the corn.

It is remarkable that this method of preparing the soil, successfully practiced among the ancients, should have been lost sight of in our country until within the last forty