190 AGRICULTURAL ESSAYS. 



mination and growth of vegetables, that any further remarks 

 to establish the fact, would be useless, and when other suffi- 

 cient quantities of efficacious manure cannot be had, this seems 

 to be indispensable, on barren lands where green crops can be 

 made to grow ; and the barrenness of lands may be considered 

 as justifying that measure, in all cases where the lands are so 

 far destitute of fertility, that it cannot produce any valuable 

 crop, as potatoes, beans, peas, &c. preparatory to a wmter 



The remarks which have been made relative to the barren 

 sandy lands, refer to those on which there has been known to 

 have been a growth of timber, and have become barren by be- 

 ing left inactive, or by improper management. And as other 

 tracts of land may be reduced to barrenness by the same means, 

 it should be observed, that the same method should be used to 

 preserve their fertility before they have become reduced, as are 

 necessary to preserve it after they have been restored. The 

 tracts of land of the latter description, are as yet probably the 

 most extensive in our country. The owners of them should 

 Iherefore be reminded, that whenever their productive powers 

 are discovered to be on the decline, and cannot be kept m tufl 

 vitror by any mode of tillage which their circumstances will 

 otherwise admit, they should be stocked with clover, or other 

 grass seed, and left to i=ot tmttl their fertility is so far eetablisli- 

 id as to admit of another course of tinage. 



Those who doubt of the practicability of fertilizing the bar- 

 ren sandy pine-plain lands, on account of a supposed barren- 

 'aess peculiar to the sandy earth, are referred to the essay on 

 the nature and constituent properties of the soil from which it 

 appears that a much greater proportion of sand is admissible*^ 

 if not an indispensable ingredient in constituting a fertile soil,: 

 than any other of the original earths or of any one of the sim- 

 4)le ingredients which are found efficacious in fertilizing the. 

 soil. Of sand, fifty-six parts of a hundred was found contained^ 

 in a soil, as fertile, perhaps, as any in the northern States ■ p 



The soil of the pine-plain land, when first cleared of the tim- 

 ber, is generally covered by a thick vegetable mould, which, 

 when properly combined with the soil, usually produces at firs^ 

 a luxuriaMcrQp. This is uniformly winter wheat. It is thea 

 planted for two or three years with Indian corn; then rye, oate, 

 4c. are taken from it, until it becomes completely exhausted. 



• See essay on nature grnd constitueat properties of soil 



