Most farmers fail to keep accounts with their several fields and crops; yet what could be more instructive than these? Here are ten acres of Corn, with a yield of 20 to 40 bushels per acre--a like area and like yield of Oats; a smaller or larger of Rye, Buckwheat, or Beans, as the case may be. If the produce is sold, most farmers know how much it brings; but how many know how much it cost? Say the Corn brings 75 cents per bushel, and the Oats 50 cents: was either or both produced at a profit? If so, at what profit? Here is a farmer who has grown from 100 to 800 bushels of Corn per annum for the last 20 years; ought he not to know by this time what Corn costs him in the average, and whether it could or could not with profit give place to something else? Most farmers grow some crops at a profit, others at a loss; ought they not to know, after an experience of five or ten years, what crops have put money into their pockets, and what have made them poorer for the growing? Of course, there is complication and some degree of uncertainty in all such account-keeping; for every one is aware that some crops take more from the soil than others, and so leave it in a worse condition for those that are to follow, and that some exact large reenforcements of fertilizers, whereof a part only is fairly chargeable to the first ensuing product, while a large share inures to the subsequent harvests. Each must judge for himself how much is to be credited for such improvement, and how much charged against other crops for deterioration. He, for example, whose meadows will cut from two to three tuns per acre of good English Hay may generally sell that Hay for twice if not thrice the immediate cost of its production, and so seem to be realizing a large profit; but, if he gives nothing to the soil in return for the heavy draft thus made upon it, his crop will dwindle year by year, until it will hardly pay for cutting; and the diminution in value of his meadows will nearly or quite balance the seeming profit accruing from his Hay. But account-keeping in every business involves essentially identical calculations; and the merchant who this year makes no net profit on his goods, but doubles the number of his customers and the extent of his trade, has thriven precisely as has the farmer whose profit on his crops has all been invested in drains permeating his bogs, and in Lime, Plaster, and other fertilizers, applied to and permanently enriching his dryer fields.