SOLON ROBINSON, 1850 373 



having first introduced it into that section, and he now 

 says that he looks upon it as an interposition of Provi- 

 dence, to save the country from total ruin, as most of the 

 land had become so utterly exhausted as not to be worth 

 cultivating, and nearly all the ridge or "forest land," as 

 it is termed, had been abandoned as worthless, and suf- 

 fered to grow up to old-field pines, which in time were 

 cut down and burnt, and the land planted, and after bring- 

 ing two or three miserable crops, suffered to grow up 

 again. The soil is generally a sandy loam, based on a 

 reddish-yellow clay, and in many places by shallow plow- 

 ing and bad management, very much washed and its 

 native fertility wasted. 



Mr. Newton's first experiment was upon such land, so 

 "deadly poor" that it had long been considered useless to 

 try to raise wheat, rye, or oats upon it, and it only 

 afforded a very scanty crop of "poverty" or "hen grass." 

 In 1846, he purchased a ton of Ichabo guano, about equal 

 to half a ton of Peruvian, and put it upon eight acres, 

 plowed in, upon which he sowed eight bushels of wheat, 

 amid the jeers of some, and doubts of all his neighbors, 

 that he never would see his seed return to him in the 

 crop. Even his negroes thought "massa hab done gone 

 crazy sure, to tink he raise wheat on dat land, caze he put 

 few pinch of snuff on him," The result, however, was 88 

 bushels, and a good stand of clover. 



In 1847, Mr. N. purchased $100 worth of Patagonian 

 guano, and used it upon equally poor land, and obtained 

 330 bushels good wheat, when he certainly could not pos- 

 sibly have made 100 bushels without guano, by the best 

 manuring he would have been able to give it. In 1848, he 

 used $200 worth of Patagonian and Chilian, at $40 per 

 ton for one, and $30 for the other, and made 540 bushels 

 of such fine wheat that it sold readily, for seed, at $1.25 



pursuits. President of the Virginia Agricultural Society, 1862. 

 Contributor to the American Farmer, 1848-1849, 1851, and South- 

 ern Cultivator, 1851. Speaker at agricultural fairs. Biographical 

 Directory of the American Congress, 1356; Southern Cultivator, 

 9:147-48 (October, 1851). 



I 



