compelled to admit that the Cliffords, who kept abreast of the age,
obtained better crops, and made their business pay far better than he
did, and he was inclined to turn his neighborly calls into thrifty use by
questioning Leonard and Webb concerning their methods and management.
Therefore he remarked to Leonard: "Do you find that you can keep your
land in good condition by rotation of crops? Folks say this will do it,
but I find some of our upland is getting mighty thin, and crops uncertain."

"What is your idea of rotation, squire?"

"Why, not growin' the same crop too often on the same ground."

"That is scarcely my idea. For the majority of soils the following
rotation has been found most beneficial: corn and potatoes, which
thoroughly subdue the sod the first year; root crops, as far as we grow
them, and oats the second; then wheat or rye, seeded at the same time
with clover or grass of some kind. We always try to plow our sod land in
the fall, for in the intervening time before planting the sod partially
decays, the land is sweetened and pulverized by the action of frost, and
a good many injurious insects are killed also. But all rules need
modification, and we try to study the nature of our various soils, and
treat them accordingly".

"What! have a chemist prescribe for 'em like a doctor?" sneered the
squire. "Mr. Walters, the rich city chap who bought Roger's worn-out
farm, tried that to his heart's content, and mine too. He had a little of
the dirt of each part of his farm analyzed, you know, and then he sent to
New York for his phosphates, his potashes, his muriates, and his
compound-super-universal panacea vegetates, and with all these bad-smelling
mixtures--his barn was like a big agricultural drug-store--he was going to