210 



would accomplish just as little as lie miglit, aud performed it as badly; 

 and now, when he shall have been stimulated by the hope of gain, the fear 

 of competition, the approbation of his employer, and, not least, the anti- 

 cipations of an independent home, it is questionable, if not clear, that 

 the planter will, in the end, be benefited by the change. There is, to 

 say the least of it, great encouragement in the consideration that 

 laborers in the South are not wanting, that their labor is not too expen- 

 sive, and that the products of their soil are well paid for in a never- 

 failing market. 



There is a great disparity, even now, between the conditions of north- 

 ern farmers and southern planters; for, apart from the mere considera- 

 tion of the sacrifice of human life, tlie former were rather benefited by 

 the results of the war, while the latter lost their all, and were driven to 

 the resort of double and triple cropping to meet their actual necessi- 

 ties. Hence the soil has been exhausted, and nothing but the lapse 

 of time will enable them to restore it; and that, too, by a rotation of 

 crops to which grass must contribute largely. There is no mode by 

 which the fertility of the soil can be so cheaply restored as by clover. 



The size of plantations in the South is a great drawback to judicious 

 farming. It has been clearly demonstrated that one hundred acres care- 

 fully and judiciously tilled will, with the same labor, produce as much as 

 two"^ hundred carelessly farmed. It is not enough that the surfi^ce be 

 loosened, and seed be committed to the earth, to insure an ade- 

 quate yield. The ground must be well and deeply plowed aud 

 plowed again; it must be well harrowed and harrowed again, until it 

 is brought nearly to the condition of the seed-bed of a garden before 

 the seed is committed to it; and then the seed should be selected with 

 a degree of care which will insure the separation of the indifferent and 

 the good. And this is a point of the utmost importance — far greater 

 than is usually attributed to it. No matter what the seed may be, there 

 will be found good, bad, and indifferent among it; and that these 

 should be separated is as fixed a principle as that better seed will pro- 

 duce a better plant, and that a better plant will produce better cotton, 

 tobacco, wheat, or corn. To separate them is not a question of labor 

 or expense, for it may be relied upon that the result will repay it four- 

 fold. How they may be separated may be answered by saying that in- 

 different seed is almost invariably lighter, and that the winuowing-mill, 

 which will blow fifty bushels of seed from a hundred, renders a most 

 valuable service to the result of a bountiful production. 



There is one more subject to which the attention of farmers every- 

 where should be drawn — the pasturage of cattle upon laud when it is 

 wet. There is no one whose experience has not taught him that to 

 plow land when it is wet is injurious to it. The reason is manifest: 

 The earth may be said to be a set of mouths and lungs which feed aud 

 breathe; to plow it when wet shuts up its capacity to feed and 

 breathe; in other words, it smears its surface so as to make it 

 impervious to light, air, and heat, for the want of which it dies; and a 

 death, too, from which resuscitation is extremely difficult. This same 

 consequence is the result of pasturing (;attle upon lands whose surface 

 has been made wet by rain or otherwise; it is worked into a mortar 

 incapable of producing fruit. 



Farming, like all other of the occupations of life, requires a study of 

 the scientific principles which enter into it, thought of the modes of 

 their application, and especially the observations of practical experi- 

 ence; and these combined will always produce profitable results. 



Prejudice often puts its seal of thoughtless reprobation upon what it 



