with, as will keep them always in good condition for work; seeing also, that they are watered as regularly as they are fed ; this is their winter feed. For spring, summer, and autumn, it is expected, that soiling them on green food, first with rye, then with lucern, and next with clover, with very little grain, will enable them to perform their work.

The oxen, and other horned cattle, are to be housed from the first of November until the first of May; and to be fed as well as the means on the farm will admit. The first (oxen) must always be kept in good condition; housed in the stalls designed for them; and the cows (so many of them as can find places) on the opposite side. The rest, with the other cattle, must be in the newly erected sheds; and the whole carefully watered every day; the ice, in frozen weather, being broken, so as to admit them to clean water.

With respect to the sheep, they must receive the best protection that can be given them this winter; against the next, I hope they will be better provided for.

And with regard to the hogs, the plan must be, to raise a given number of good ones, instead of an indiscriminate number of indifferent ones, half of which die or are stolen before the period arrives for putting them up as porkers. To accomplish this, a sufficient number of the best sows should be appropriated to the purpose; and so many pigs raised from them as will insure the quantity of pork, which the farm ought to furnish. Whether it will be most advisable to restrain these hogs from running at large or not, can be decided with more precision after the result of those now in close pens is better known.

The exact quantity of corn used by those, which are now in pens, should be ascertained and regularly reported, in order to learn the result.

Stables and Farm Pens.

These ought to be kept well littered, and the stalls clean; as well for the comfort of the creatures that are contained in them, as for the purpose of manure; but as straw cannot be afforded for this purpose, leaves and such spoiled straw or weeds as will not do for food, must serve for the stables; and the first, that is, leaves and corn-stalks, is all that can be applied to the pens. To do this work effectually, let the cornstalks be cut down by a few careful people with sharp hoes, so low as never to be in the way of scythes at harvest; and whenever the wheat will admit carts to run on it without injury, let them be bronght off and stacked near the farm pens. In like

manner let the people, with their blankets, go every evening, or as often as occasion may require, to the nearest wood, and fill them with leaves for the purposes above mentioned; bottoming the beds with corn-stalks, and covering them thick with leaves. A measure of this sort will be, if strictly attended to, and punctually performed, of great utility in every point of view. It will save food, make the cattle lie warm and comfortable, and produce much manure. The hogs also in pens must be well bedded in leaves.

Fencing.

As stock of no kind, according to this plan, will be suffered to run on the arable fields or clover lots, (except sheep in the day on the rye fields, as has been mentioned before,) partition fences between the fields, until they can be raised of quicks, may be dispensed with. But it is of great importance, that all the exterior or outer fences should be substantially good; and those also which divide the common, or woodland pasture, from the fields and clover lots, are to be very respectable.

To accomplish this desirable object in as short a time as possible, and with the smallest expense of timber, the post and rail fence which runs from the Negro quarters, or rather from the corner of the lot enclosing them, up to the division between fields Nos. 7 and 8, may be placed on the bank (which must be raised higher) running to the creek. In like manner, the fence from the gate, which opens into No. 2, quite down to the river, along the Cedar Hedge Row, as also those rails which are between Nos. 1 and 2, and between Nos. 2 and 3, may all be taken away, and applied to the outer fences, and the fences of the lanes from the barn into the woodland pasture, from the former (the barn) into No. 5; for the fences of all these lanes must be good, as the stock must have a free and uninterrupted passage along them, at all times, from the barnyard to the woodland pasture.

and

All the fencing from the last mentioned place, (between me and Mr Mason,) until it joins Mr Lear's farm, and thence with the line between him and me, until it comes to the river, will require to be substantially good; at its termination on the river, dependence must placed in a water fence; for if made of common rails, they would be carried off by boatmen for firewood. The fences separating fields Nos. 1 and 8 from the woodland pasture must also be made good, to prevent depredations on the fields by my own stock.

Crops &c. for 1801.

No. 5, is to be in corn, and to be invariably in that article. It is to be planted (if drills are thought to be ineligible until the ground is much improved) in rows, 6 feet by 4, or 7 feet by 31, the wide part open to the south. These hills are to be manured as highly as the means will admit; and the corn planted every year in the middle of the rows of the preceding year; by doing which, and mixing the manure and earth by the plough and other workings, the whole in time will be enriched.

The washed and gullied parts of this field should be levelled, and as much improved as possible, or left uncultivated. Although it is more broken than some of the other fields, it has its advantages. 1st, It has several inlets extending into it, with easy ascents therefrom; 2dly, It is convenient to the mud in the bed of the creek, whensoever (by means of the scow) resort is had thereto, and good landing places; and, 3dly, It is as near to the barn as any other, when a bridge and causeway shall be made over the Spring Branch. To these may be added, that it is more remote from squirrels than any other.

Nos. 6 and 7, or such part thereof as is not so much washed or gullied, as to render ploughing ineligible, are to be fallowed for wheat. One of which, if both cannot, is to have the stubble ploughed in and sown with rye, and the low and strong parts to have timothy or orchard-grass seeds, perhaps both, in different places, sprinkled over them, for the purpose of raising seed. On the rye pasture the sheep are to be fed in winter and spring, and treated in all respects as No. 3 in 1800.

In the Years 1802, 1803, and so on.

The corn ground remaining the same, two fields, in the following numbers, will be fallowed for wheat, and treated in all respects as mentioned above; and if pumpkins, cymlins, turnips, pease, and such like growth, are found beneficial to the land, or useful and profitable for stock, ground may readily be found for them.

These are the great outlines of a plan, and the operations of it, for the next year, and for years to come, for the River Farm. The necessary arrangements, and all the preparatory measures for carrying it into effect, ought to be adopted without delay, and invariably pursued. Smaller matters may, and undoubtedly will, occur occasionally, but none, it is presumed, that can militate against it materially.

To carry it into effect advantageously, it pensable duty of him, who is employed to of the operations, to take a prospective and of the whole business, which is laid befor eral parts thereof may be so ordered and ar sort of work may follow another sort in pro without loss of labor or of time; for nothin of the latter, and consequently of the forme labor, and labor money,) than shifting fro other before it is finished, as if chance or moment, not judgment and foresight, dir It will be acknowledged, that weather and may at times interrupt a regular course if a plan is well digested beforehand, the long, with a man who is acquainted with business, and the crops he is to attend to.

Every attentive and discerning person, business of the year laid before him, and the nature of the work, can be at no loss to tage. He will know, that there are many be accomplished in winter as well as in su spring, summer, and autumn only are fit use the wise man's saying, that "there is a for all things," and that unless they are emb thrive or go on smoothly. There are man work, which can be executed in hail, rain, in sunshine; and if they are set about in fa there be a necessity for it,) there will be no weather; the people therefore must be idle. dence and foresight will always keep the and order his work accordingly, so as to time, or idleness. These same observation force to frozen ground, and to ground too which if worked will be injured thereby.

These observations might be spun to a they are sufficient to produce reflection,—a industry and proper attention, will produce be wished.

There is one thing, however, I cannot fo in strong terms; it is, that whenever I or done, it must be done; or a reason given soon as the impracticability is discovered, why which will produce a countermand or chang the person receiving the order to suspend, o

execution; and after it has been supposed to have gone into effect, to be told, that nothing has been done in it, that it will be done, or that it could not be done,-either of these is unpleasant and disagreeable to me, having been all my life accustomed to more regularity and punctuality. Nothing but system and method are required to accomplish any reasonable requests.

3. ROTATION OF CROPS.

Washington studied and practised for several years a system of rotation of crops, on some of his farms. The four following tables, printed from a copy in his own handwriting, will give some idea of his method in this respect. They apply to one farm only, which contained 525 acres, and was divided into seven fields. The rotation in this instance is extended to seven years. The first part of each table indicates the kind of products destined for each field, under the respective years. Then follow the times for ploughing the different fields, and the number of days it will take. Next, an estimate of the probable quantity and value of the products. Lastly, remarks on the plan of the table, and the results of the rotation.

In a note attached to these tables Washington says, "The ploughing is calculated at three fourths of an acre per day. If, then, one plough will go over a seventy-five acre field in one hundred days, five ploughs will do it in twenty days. In some ground, according to the state of it, and to the seasons, an acre at least ought to be ploughed per day by each team; but the estimate is made at three fourths of an acre in order to reduce it to more certainty.

"The fields are all estimated at seventy-five acres each (although they run a little more or less) for the sake of more easy calculation of the crops, and to show their comparative yield."

The following tables are a selection from a great many, in which the same general system is pursued.