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or cutting, you would oblige me by adding a small quantity of the 

 seeds, to put me in stock. Early grasses, unless a species can be 

 found that will stand a hot sun, and oftentimes severe droughts in the 

 summer months, without much expense of cultivation, would suit our 

 climate best. 



You see. Sir, that without ceremony, I avail myself of your kind 

 offer; but if ycu should find in the course of our correspondence, that 

 I am likely to become troublesome, you can easily check me. Inclosed 

 I give you an order on Wakelin Welch, Esq. for the cost of such things 

 as you may have the goodness to send me. I do not at this time ask 

 for any other implements of husbandry than the ploughs; but when I 

 have read your Annals (for they are but just come to hand) I may re- 

 quest more. In the meanwhile, permit me to ask what a good ploughman 

 might be had for: annual wages, to be found (being a single man) in 

 board, washing, and lodging? The writers upon husbandry estimate the 

 hire of labourers so differently in England, that it is not easy to 

 discover from them, whether one of the class I am speaking of would 

 cost eight or eighteen pounds a year. A good ploughman at low wages, 

 would come very opportunely with the ploughs here requested. 



By means of the application I made to my friend Mr. Fairfax, of 

 Bath, and through the medium of Mr. Rack, a bailiff is sent to me, 

 who, if he is acquainted with the best courses of cropping, will 

 answer my purposes as a director or superintendent of my farms. He 

 has the appearance of a plain honest farmer; — is industrious; — and 

 from the character given of him by a Mr. Peacy, with whom he has lived 

 many years, has understanding in the management of stock, and of most 

 matters for which he is employed. How far his abilities may be equal 

 to a pretty extensive concern, is questionable. And what is still 

 worse, he has come over with improper ideas; for instead of preparing 

 his mind to meet a ruinous course of cropping, exhausted lands, and 

 numberless inconveniences into which we had been thrown by an eight 

 years war, he seems to have expected that he was coming to well organ- 

 ized farms, and that he was to have met ploughs, harrows, and all 

 the other implements of husbandry, in as high taste as the best farming 

 counties in England could have exhibited them. / How far his fortitude 

 will enable him to encounter these disappointments, or his patience and 

 perseverance will carry him towards the work of reform, remains to be 

 decided. 



With great esteem, I have the honour to be. Sir, your most obedient, 

 humble servant, G. WASHINGTON. - Letters, on Ag.rlcultU-re^rom_His_Excsllenc^ 

 George Wa shington ... edited by Franklin Knight, p. 15-18 (Washington, D. C, 1847). 



