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JEFFERSON TO [correspondent's name lost], FROM PHILADELPHIA. 

 MARCH 23. 1798 



Legumes and rotations are the main subjects 

 treated in this letter. 



Dear Sir, — I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favors of 

 August 16th and 18th, together with the box of seed accompanying 

 the former, which has just come to hand. The letter of the 4th of 

 June, which you mention to have committed to Mr. King, has never been 

 received. It has most likely been intercepted on the sea, now become 

 a field of lawless and indiscriminate rapine and violence. The first 

 box which came through Mr. Donald, arrived safely the last year, but 

 being a little too late for that season, its contents have been divided 

 between Mr. Randolph and myself, and will be committed to the earth 

 now immediately. The peas and the vetch are most acceptable indeed. 

 Since you were here, I have tried that species of your field pea which 

 is cultivated in New York, and begin to fear that that plant v/ill 

 scarcely bear our sun and soil. A late acquisition too of a species 

 of our country pea, called the cow pea, has pretty well supplied the 

 place in my husbandry which I had destined for the European field pea. 

 It is very productive, excellent food for man and beast, awaits without 

 loss our leisure for gathering, and shades the ground very closely 

 through the hottest months of the year. This with the loosening of 

 the soil, I take to be the chief means by which the pea improves the 

 soil. We know that the sun in our cloudless climate is the most 

 powerful destroyer of fertility in naked ground, and therefore that 

 the perpetual fallows will not do here, which are so beneficial in a 

 cloudy climate. Still I shall with care try all the several kinds of 

 pea you have been so good as to send me, and having tried all hold 

 fast that which is good. Mr. Randolph is peculiarly happy in having 

 the barleys committed to him, as he had been desirous of going con- 

 siderably into that culture. I was able at the same time to put into 

 his hands Siberian barley, sent me from France. I look forward with 

 considerable anxiety to the success of the winter vetch, for it gives 

 us a good winter crop, and helps the succeeding summer one. It is 

 something like doubling the produce of the field. I know it does 

 well in Italy, and therefore have the more hope here. My experience 

 leaves me no fear as to the success of clover. I have never seen 

 finer than in some of my fields which have never been manured. My 

 rotation is triennial; to wit, one year of wheat and two of clover in 

 the stronger fields, or two of peas in the weaker, with a crop of In- 

 dian corn and potatoes between every other rotation, that is to say 

 once in seven years. Under this easy course of culture, aided with 



