ROTATION FOR THE SOIL. The value of rotation is no longer denied by any. It has long been accepted as one of the most important in conserving the fertility of the soil, but a rota tion to be valuable must include not only the smaller cereal grains, but as large a variety of cultivated crops as possible. In connection with the foregoing, meadows and pastures are the most important in assisting to restore fer tility, and in connection with the, great fallow crop of the States, Indian corn. The fertility of originally fertile land may by these means be kept up fully and indefinitely. All the small cereal grains are exhausting, and none more so than oats, of valuable constituents. A soil that will produce fifty bushels of oats per acre should produce twenty bushels of wheat., The oat crop will exhaust nearly as much pot ash, nearly half as much of the phosphates, and nearly 50 cent, more nitrogen than the crop of wheat named, in the grain. The value of straw as manure is about equal in each, but wheat is always sold to be carried away from the farm, while oats may or should be fed at home. Thus a large amount of the valuable fertilizing materials are returned to the soil as manure if carefully saved. The reason why In dian corn is so little exhausting to the soil is that it is nearly all fed on the farm, and the stalks, being fed off in the fields, these and the manure dropped are again plowed under. An other reason why Indian corn is not excessively exhausting to the soil is that it contains more largely of carbon and less of phosphate and ni trogen, but more potash. Neither the elements of carbon—starch, sugar, oil, etc.—nor potash are deficient in fertile soils, neither do they wear out so easily as the phosphates and albu minoids, or, as the latter may be properly classed, nitrogen. Indian corn, also, must 're ceive clean and careful cultivation, in order to produce a good crop. Hence it is the cheapest and best fallow or cleaning crop known to American agriculture. Flax is generally classed as an exhausting crop. It is not especially so, however, certainly not more so than wheat and oats, if reaped and the straw is returned to the soil. It, however, unless especially cleaned, brings into the soil all manner of foul weeds, difficult to eradicate. The difficulty with a ro tation that includes only the small cereal grains, and flax is, these grains are constantly exhausting the soil of one class of constituents, and largely of the more difficult to replace, phosphorous and nitrogen. The great value of pasture, then, is that nearly all the manure made is returned directly to the soil, and the manure made from the hay of meadows may easily be returned. The true value of straw on the farm is as an ab sorbent of the liquid manure, more valuable by far than that of the solids. Plenty of pasture and plenty of Indian corn, therefore, are the most valuable in the long run in the rotation of crops. These conserve, while the selling of the cereal grain carries away fertility that can never be replaced for the price of that carried away, unless the land is cultivated to other crops to such an extent as to allow the soil naturally to recuperate. In the West, or on any virgin soils, not less than three-quarters of the land should be in pasture, meadow and fallow crops one year with another, to hold the full fertility of the soil. In order to fully accomplish this, all
the manure should be saved and again be carted on to the soil. In this connection, Prof. J. W. Sanborn, reporting experiments in crop rotation, gives the following which are valuable upon the philosophy of rotation: Rotations are valuable because plants vary in the area of the soil in which the roots grow, and from which they derive the sustenance of the plant, thus more completely utilizing the soil within their reach. There is a remarkable variation in the power of plants to appropriate the various elements of plant growth, due, at least in part, to the character of the acids secreted by their roots. Thus one plant, like clover, has a high power of gathering nitrogen, and another, like wheat, a very low power. Plants vary in their weight of roots ; as an illustration, clover carries several times the weight of roots that wheat does ; it will be seen that, inasmuch as clover roots are very much richer in nitrogen than wheat, and carry enough nitrogen to grow a crop of wheat, that wheat will most advantageously follow clover. Thus, likewise, other plants follow each other advantageously. Rotation of crops baffles, in a large measure, the root enemies, both insect and fungus, that prey upon them. Each. plant hav ing its own peculiar enemies, changing of plants removes them is to fields unoccupied by such ene mies. This s true of the above-ground growth of plants to an important degree. Plants vary in the amounts of varying elements of nutri tion actually taken up in growth ; thus, while wheat takes only one and one-fourth pounds of potash for every pound of phosphoric acid, pota toes take three and one-fourth pounds of potash for each pouud of phosphoric acid. Continu ous growth of potatoes would exhaust the pot ash of the soil or of supplied manure long be fore the phosphoric acid would give out. The leaves of plants vary in their power of gaining food and of vaporizing water, and are roughly divided into broad and narrow leaved. Leaves vary in their season of active growth. Those plants maturing in midsummer and early fall generally gather nitrogen (corn and turnips are good examples), following in their growth the decomposing influence of the sun, more easily and fully than other crops do. Rotation con serves soil fertility and yet aids in soil decom position by alternation of grass, or clover crops and hoed crops. Under a continuation of plow and tillage crops, leaching,, volatilization and washing of fertility is rapid and may be or is more than carried away by crops, especially so of nitrogen. Rotation of crops distributes labor over the year, and therefore economizes labor and gives regular help and aids in the solution of the labor problem of the farm. (See also Ro tation of Crops, Soil, etc.) RYE. The rye crop of the United 'States is insignificant in comparison with the other cereals. The Statistician of the Department of Agriculture, in his latest report, says of this crop and those following, that it is used to a limited extent for bread in combination with maize in New England and by the people com ing from continental Europe; and in a still smaller proportion for distillation. The crop of 1886 was about an average, 26,000,000 bushels, in round numbers, yielding a little less than twelve bushels per acre. The following state ment shows the previous production and value.