“His general plan is to leave the manure in the yards, basements, and sheds, under the sheep, until spring. He usually sells his fat sheep in March. As soon as the sheep are removed, the manure is either thrown up into loose heaps in the yard, or drawn directly to the field, where it is to be used, and made into a heap there. The manure is not spread on the land until the autumn. It remains in the heaps or piles all summer, being usually turned once, and sometimes twice. The manure becomes thoroughly rotted.” Mr. Johnston, like the Deacon, applies his manure to the corn crop. But the Deacon draws out his fresh green manure in the spring, on sod-land, and plows it under. Mr. Johnston, on the other hand, keeps his manure in a heap through the summer, spreads it on the sod in September, or the first week in October. Here it lies until next spring. The grass and clover grow up through manure, and the grass and manure are turned under next spring, and the land planted to corn. Mr. Johnston is thoroughly convinced that he gets far more benefit from the manure when applied on the surface, and left exposed for several months, than if he plowed it under at once. I like to write and talk about John Johnston. I like to visit him. He is so delightfully enthusiastic, believes so thoroughly in good farming, and has been so eminently successful, that a day spent in his company can not fail to encourage any farmer to renewed efforts in improving his soil. “You _must_ drain,” he wrote to me; “when I first commenced farming, I never made any money until I began to underdrain.” But it is not underdraining alone that is the cause of his eminent success. When he bought his farm, “near Geneva,” over fifty years ago, there was a pile of manure in the yard that had lain there year after year, until it was, as he said, “as black as my hat.” The former owner regarded it as a nuisance, and a few months before young Johnston bought the farm, had given some darkies a cow on condition that they would draw out this manure. They drew out six loads, took the cow--and that was the last seen of them. Johnston drew out this manure, raised a good crop of wheat, and that gave him a start. He says he has been asked a great many times to what he owes his success as a farmer, and he has replied that he could not tell whether it was “dung or credit.” It was probably neither. It was the man--his intelligence, industry, and good common sense. That heap of black mould was merely an instrument in his hands that he could turn to good account.