“Other errors of great magnitude might be pointed out; such as making the tobacco product of Virginia 11,000 hhds., when her inspection records show 55,000 hhds., thrown into market as the crop of that year. Who believes that 12,233 lbs. pitch, rosin and turpentine, or the tenth part of that quantity, were manufactured in Louisiana in 1840, or that New York produced 10,093,991 lbs. maple-sugar in a single year, or twenty such statements equally absurd, which I might take from the returns?”
Mr. Cist will find in the appendix to Dr. Jackson’s Final Report on the Geology of New Hampshire, a statement, that Vermont makes 6,000,000 pounds of sugar annually. If this be so, we may, without extravagance, suppose that New York reaches 10,000,000 lbs. So far as we have collateral means of judging, the amount of maple-sugar is _under_-stated in the census of 1840.
[9] Appendix to final Report on the Geology and Mineralogy of New Hampshire, page 361. This admirable Report is an able exposition of the benefit of public State surveys.
[10] If those who drink whisky would pour it on to the sugar in the refining cones, instead of upon sugar in tumblers, it would refine _them_ as much as it does the sugar; performing two valuable processes at once.
Many terms, in general use among scientific men, and usually employed in agricultural works, are obscure to young readers. For their sakes we will explain some of them; and shall not be angry if _old_ men profit by the explanation.
SOIL.—The surface-earth, of whatever ingredients it may be composed. It may be a clay-soil, a sand-soil, a calcareous soil, as the surface is composed of clay, or sand, or clay strongly mixed with lime, etc.
SUBSOIL.—The earth lying below the ordinary depth to which the plow or spade penetrate. Sometimes it has hardened by the running of the plow over it for a series of years; then it is called _pan_, as hard-pan, clay-pan, etc. It is sometimes of the same nature as the top-soil, as in clay-lands; in others it is a different earth; as when a coarse gravel underlies vegetable mold, or when clay lies beneath sandy soil.
SUBSOIL PLOWING.—In ordinary plowing, the share runs from five to seven inches deep. A plow has been constructed (called subsoil plow), to follow in the furrow, and break up from six to eight inches deeper—so that the whole plowing penetrates from ten to sixteen inches.