9. The value of farms is increasing, as well from an improved condition of agriculture as our nearness to the city of New-York, and our improved facilities for getting to and from that great city.

10. The market for the products of this county is in a great degree a home market, though very considerable is sent by the railroad as well as by water to the city. This would seem to tell not very well for our agriculture, but it must be recollected that our situation is peculiar; we are surrounded by water-the ocean on one side and the sound on the other, with the coast on each side indented with bays and rivers, which afford abundant and profitable fishing The fishermen who are employed in procuring fish for New-York market are dependent upon the farmers for their food, and many of our farm products, instead of being sent to New-York for a market, are sold to the merchants at the principal fishing points, and are by them re-sold to the fishermen, receiving that money which has been received from the city for fish and other products of the waters. It has been stated as a fact that more money is received from the sale of fish, oysters, &c., from the waters of Suffolk county than from all the products of some of the most flourishing agricultural counties of this State; but I presume it would be better for our agriculture that we were denied these seeming advantages.

11. I am unwilling to give what I consider to be an average of the yield per acre of the crops in our county for the past year, as I think it would answer no good purpose, inasmuch as it would be no criterion by which to judge of anything for the future.

In conclusion I would add, that our Agricultural So iety has become defunct, in consequence of the officers who were elected for this year not having attended at all to their duties.

SAMUEL L. THOMPSON.

TIOGA.

FARMING IN TIOGA, BY HENRY YOung.

OWEGO, December 20, 1854.

Dear Sir-It is with reluctance I relate the fate of the Massachusetts corn you sent me. I did not get it until my corn was planted and up, which prevented me from giving it a fair chance. However, I planted it under these unfavorable circumstances; it came up and grew pretty well, and got perfectly ripe. It has very deep kernels on the cob, and promises to yield well. I cut it up myself, and placed the stout in one corner of the field, supposing it to be perfectly safe. I sent a man into the field husking, and he, either by mistake or wilfully, husked it out, and put it with the other corn, without my knowing anything of it until it was put into the crib. My son was accidentally passing by it and discovered it was husked out; he immediately searched the stout, and found six or eight small ears, which he carefully brought home and took care of. I intend in the spring to plant it in a favorable situation, so that I may ascertain its good qualities, if it has any.

My crop of corn was good this year, although my neighbors' was light, and the corn crop generally through this section of country was poor. I had between eleven and twelve hundred bushels of ears from 9 acres; 3 acres produced between 500 and 600 bushels of ears. It was the stoutest piece of corn I ever saw; it was a complete thicket, and stood from nine to eleven feet in height; the ears were from ten to fifteen inches in length. My oat crop was very heavy, and badly lodged; more straw than I had two years ago, when the yield was sixty bushels per acre. My crop of hay was excellent; five acres produced twenty tons; the other part was very heavy. My neighbors' crop of hay was very light, and the crop generally through this part of the country was very poor. My crop of potatoes was good both in quantity and quality.

These crops all grew upon the notorious Cox's patent, where thirty-five years ago, it would scarcely produce a new grain from an old one. My crop of wheat on the hill farm was very poor

although it looked remarkably well in the fall and early part of winter. The rye was middling. The culture of the corn crop is generally on land that has been seeded down two or three years, with a coat of barn-yard manure, about twenty loads per acre every alternate time it is plowed up. The land is plowed in April, and the corn planted about the middle of May; as soon as the corn can be seen sufficiently clear, the cultivator is passed through them both ways, and as soon as the corn is high enough, the plow is passed through them both ways; the hoes follow the plow the last time. In about two weeks the same process is again performed, with the difference of plowing the earth to the rows, instead of from them. Some of my neighbors, with a view of saving expense, use the cultivator instead of hoeing, which has a bad effect, as it leaves the grass in the hills of corn, and also leaves the land in a poor condition for the next crop. I observed a piece of land that had been cultivated without using either hoe or plow. When it was plowed up the following spring, it was very cloddy and hard, and consequently unproductive, as the land must be sufficiently pulverized, either by manure, plowing or hoeing, before it is fit food for the roots of plants to feed upon. My system of cropping appears to be as near perfection as any other, alth ugh very simple; which is, corn and oats, and seed down with grass seed, two or three years; the sod to be manured every alternate time it is plowed up, as the superiority of my hay crop plainly demonstrates this uncommonly dry season. My corn and oat crop was almost double to the general crop of this section of country; so that this system produces more corn, oats and hay, for a course of ten or fifteen years, than almost any other commonly pursued, and leaves the land in a high state of cultivation. But it requires to be all done perfectly, especially the corn crop. Any person that can establish a system that universally increases the crop, say five or aix bushels per acre, is entitled to the highest premium, as the amount throughout the whole country would be immense; whereas, a single acre producing a double crop, would not enrich the owner or consumer to any great extent. It often engrosses his whole attention, and causes him to neglect the other part of his farm by not sufficiently

hoeing, a thing often neglected and not half performed, which causes so many poor crops. As a further demonstration, take two beds in a garden of equal quality; plant them with cabbage, and hoe one of them every week until the leaves touch each other, and not hoe the other at all; it will be found that the hoed one will be as large again as the other. Or plant a field with corn, and well plow and hoe half of it three or four times, and not plow or hoe the other half at all; the hoed part will produce four times as much as the other. One great benefit is, that it keeps plants moist in dry weather, the advantage of which to their growth is easily seen. This good office it performs on a double account. First, as they are better nourished by hoeing, they require less moisture, and consequently carry off less, for those plants which receive the greatest increase, having most terrestrial nourishment, carry off the least water in proportion to their increase. Thus, barley or oats being sown on a piece of ground well divided by tillage and manure, will come up and grow without rain, when the same grain sown on another part of the same land, not thus manured and tilled, will scarce come up at all without rain; or if they do, will wait wholly for the rain for their growth and increase; a demonstration that the tiled earth receives an advantage from the dew which the untilled does not. Dig a hole in any piece of land of such a depth as the plow usually goes to; fill this with powdered earth, and after a day or two, examine the place, and the bottom part of the earth and the bottom part of the hole will be found moist, while all the rest of the ground at the same depth, will be found dry. Or if a field be tilled in lands, and one land made fine by frequent deep plowing, while another is left rough by insufficient tillage, and the whole field be then plowed across in the dryest weather, which has continued long, every fine land will be turned up moist, and every rough land as dry as powder from top to bottom.

The beginning of last October, I had occasion to go to Elmira. I closely observed the crops of corn all the way from Owego to that place, although a railroad car is not a fit place for observing objects in a country through which you pass. However, I could plainly see the crop of corn was deficient. I did not see a piece

all the way that was more than middling, and many pieces far short of that. I went about twenty miles down the Susquehanna, and about the same distance up the Chemung. I saw several pieces of land that were only partially mowed, perhaps two or three acres in one part of the field, and an acre or two in another, and then a streak not mowed at all. I saw a considerable field of oats not harvested at all. I also saw several pieces of land recently plowed which did not indicate that the next crop would be abundant. The corn crop was all in stout-very little husked-which afforded a good opportunity of judging the weight of the crop. A considerable quantity of it did not much exceed three feet in height. The land on the Chemung has always been reckoned first rate quality; now to see land of that description with such miserable crops on it, plainly indicates the culture is deficient.

All my practical operations are based on the theory of vegetable nutrition, although they differ some in three courses from the rules laid down by Mr. Tull. He went further in that theory than I have yet done, by establishi g a permanent system of unbroken cropping, that improved the land without the aid of manure, by growing wheat for a number of successive years on the same land. Whether that system would be profitable for growing a number of successive crops of corn is a problem as yet unsolved. The heaviest crops of corn I have raised has been with manure, combined with the practical part of that theory. Some of my neighbors say the reason why my crops are superior to theirs is because my circumstances will allow me to farm as I like. If I, or any other person, can increase the crops and improve the land by adopting a better system of tillage, we may naturally conclude he would soon be in circumstances to farm as he liked, as I suppose any person would prefer a good crop to a poor one. One of my neighbors planted a field of corn of twelve acres, and once hoed one part of it very imperfectly, and did not hoe the other part at all, with a view of saving expense; when he came to hast it he had not more corn or fodder than I had from 34 acres, which plainly shows that corn, or any other crop, cannot derive sufficient nourishment for its growth without the soil is sufficiently pulverized for the roots of the plant to feed upon.