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some manure, I hope my fields v/ill recover their pristine fertility, 

 v/hich had in some of them been completely exhausted by perpetual crops 

 of Indian corn and wheat alternately. The atmosphere is certainly 

 the great workshop of nature for elaborating the fertilizing principles 

 and insinuating them into the soil. It has been relied on as the sole 

 means of regenerating our soil by most of the land-holders in the 

 canton I inhabit, and where rest has been resorted to before a total 

 exhaustion, the soil has never failed to recover. If, indeed, it be 

 so run down as to be incapable of throwing weeds or herbage of any 

 kind, to shade the soil from the sun, it either goes off in gullies, 

 and is entirely lost, or remains exhausted till a growth springs up 

 of such trees as will rise in the poorest soils. Under the shade of 

 these and the cover soon formed of their deciduous leaves, and a com- 

 mencing herbage, such fields sometimes recover in a, long course of 

 years; but this is too long to be taken into a course of husbandry. 

 Not so however is the term within which the atmosphere alone will 

 reintegrate a soil rested in due season. A year of wheat v/ill be 

 balanced by one, two, or three years of rest and atmospheric influence, 

 according to the quality of the soil. It has been said that no re- 

 tation of crops will keep the earth in the same degree of fertility 

 without the aid of manure. But it is well known here that a space of 

 rest greater or less in spontaneous herbage, will restore the exhaus- 

 tion of a single crop. This then is a rotation; and as it is not to 

 be believed that spontaneous herbage is the only or best covering dur- 

 ing rest, so may v/e expect that a substitute for it may be found which 

 will yield profitable crops. Such perhaps are clover, peas, vetches, 

 &c. A rotation then may be found, v/hich by giving time for the slow 

 influence of the atmosphere, will keep the soil in a constant and equal 

 state of fertility. But the advantage of manuring, is that it will do 

 more in one than the atmosphere would require several years to do, and 

 consequently enables you so much the oftener to take exhausting crops 

 from the soil, a circumstance of importance where there is more labor 

 than land. I am much indebted. - H. A. Washington, ed.. The W ritings of 

 Thomas Jefferson . 4:223-225 (Washington, D. C, Taylor & Maury, 1854). 



