Nor do I deny that there are soils which it is not advisable to plow deeply. Prof. Mapes told me he had seen a tract in West Jersey whereof the soil was but eight inches deep, resting on a stratum of copperas (sulphate of iron,) which, being upturned by the plow and mingled with the soil, poisoned the crops planted thereon. And I saw, last Summer, on the intervale of New River, in the western part of Old Virginia, many acres of Corn which were thrifty and luxuriant in spite of shallow plowing and intense drouth, because the rich, black loam which had there been deposited by semi-annual inundations, until its depth ranged from two to twenty feet, was so inviting and permeable that the corn-roots ran _below_ the bottom of the furrow about as readily as above that line. I do not doubt that there are many millions of acres of such land that would produce tolerably, and sometimes bounteously, though simply scratched over by a brush harrow and never plowed at all. In the infancy of our race, when there were few mouths to fill and when farming implements were very rude and ineffective, cultivation was all but confined to these facile strips and patches, so that the utility, the need, of deep tillage was not apparent. And yet, we know the crops often failed utterly in those days, plunging whole nations into the miseries of famine. The primitive plow was a forked stick or tree-top, whereof one prong formed the coulter, the other and longer the beam; and he who first sharpened the coulter-prong with a stone hatchet was the Whitney or McCormick of his day. The plow in common use to-day in Spain or Turkey is an improvement on this, for it has an iron point; still, it is a miserable tool. When, at five years old, I first rode the horse which drew my father's plow in furrowing for or cultivating his corn, it had an iron coulter and an iron share; but it was mainly composed of wood. In the hard, rocky soil of New-Hampshire, as full of bowlders and pebbles as a Christmas pudding is of plums, plowing with such an implement was a sorry business at best. My father hitched eight oxen and a horse to his plow when he broke up pebbly green-sward, and found an acre of it a very long day's work. I hardly need add that subsoiling was out of the question, and that six inches was the average depth of his furrow. I judge that the best Steel Plows now in use do twice the execution that his did with a like expenditure of power--that we can, with equal power, plow twelve inches as easily and rapidly as he plowed six. Ought we to do it? Will it pay?