How many tuns of earth ought a farmer to be obliged to turn over and over in order to obtain therefrom a hundred bushels of Corn? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? _Five_ thousand? Other things being equal, no one will doubt that, if he can make the Corn from one hundred tuns of soil, it were better to do so than to employ five hundred or five thousand. It seems clear to my mind that, though other conditions be unequal, it is generally well to endeavor to produce the required quantity from the smaller rather than the larger area. I fully share the average farmer's partiality for barn-yard manure in preference to most, if not all, commercial fertilizers. In my judgment, almost any farmer who has cattle, with fit shelter and Winter fodder, can make fertilizers far cheaper than he can buy them. I judge that almost every farmer who has paid $100 or over for Guano (for instance), might have more considerably enriched his farm by drawing muck from some convenient bog or pond into his barn-yard in August or September and carting it thence to his fields the next Fall. If he can get no muck within a mile, let him cut, when they are in blossom, all the weeds that grow near him, especially by the road-side, cart them at once into his barn-yard, and there convert them into fertilizers. In Autumn, replace the hay-rack on the wagon or cart, and pile load after load of freshly-fallen leaves into your yard; taking them, if you may, from the sides of roads and fences, and from any place where they may have been lodged or heaped by the winds, your own wood-lot excepted. Plow the turf off of any scurvy lot or road-side, and pile it into the barn-yard; nay, dig a hundred loads of pure clay, and place it there, if you can get it at a small expense, and your average soil is gravelly or sandy. The farmer who is unable or reluctant to buy commercial fertilizers should apply his whole force every Autumn to replenishing his barn-yard with that material which he can obtain most easily which the trampling of his cattle may readily convert into manure. A month is too little, two months would not be too much, to devote to this good work. Some may seem obliged to postpone it to Winter; but that is to run the risk of embarrassment by frost or snow, and encounter the certainty that your material will be inferior in quality, or not so well fitted to apply to grain-crops the ensuing Fall.