Produced by Steven Giacomelli and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) [Illustration: Author] SOIL CULTURE; CONTAINING A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, POMOLOGY, DOMESTIC ANIMALS, RURAL ECONOMY, AND AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. BY J. H. WALDEN, A. M. ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY ROBERT SEARS, 181 WILLIAM STREET. 1858. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, BY J. H. WALDEN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Northern District of Illinois. SAVAGE & McCREA, STEREOTYPERS, C. A. ALVORD, PRINTER, 13 Chambers Street, N.Y. No. 15 Vandewater Street, N.Y. * * * * * TO THE PRACTICAL CULTIVATORS OF THE SOIL, The True Lords of the Manor, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, BY THEIR SINCERE FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. * * * * * PREFATORY NOTE TO THE READER. If "he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, is a benefactor of his race," he is not less so who imparts to millions a knowledge of the methods by which it is done. The last half century has been the era of experiments and writing on the cultivation of the soil. The result has been the acquisition of more knowledge on the subjects embraced, than the world had attained in all its previous history. That knowledge is scattered through many volumes of numerous periodicals and books, and interspersed with many theories, and much speculation, that can never be valuable in practice. In the form in which it is presented, it confuses, rather than aids, the great mass of cultivators. Hence the prejudice against "_book-farming_." Provided established facts only are presented, they are none the worse for being printed.