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facts, 1st. That the roots and stubble of tobacco left on 

 the ground are more in quantity, and contain more of 

 the essential qualities of manure, than those of any other 

 plant ; 2d. The plant itself, while growing, feeds more 

 from the atrtiosphere than any other ; and 3d. It is not 

 suffered to go to seed, the process in all vegetation 

 which is supposed to make the greatest draft on the 

 fertility of the earth. Neither is the culture of tobacco 

 incompatible with a proper rotation of crops, and an im- 

 proved system of husbandry, for we find as extensive and 

 as successful efforts at improvement made in the tobacco 

 region, and by tobacco makers, as in any section of our 

 State.'' 



With regard to the exhaustion of land by tobacco, let 

 us look with an e^'e of common sense at the matter. 

 Suppose you clear a piece of woodland, and take off 

 1,200 lbs. of tobacco the first year ; 1,000 the second ; 

 800 the third ; 650 the fourth ; and 500 the fifth, all with- 

 out manuring. Has it not been a process of taking 

 something every year, and adding nothing ? Of course, 

 the land is exhausted. Who cannot see that it would 

 be, just as plainly as he could see the uncovered bottom 

 of a purse, out of which something had been taken daily, 

 and nothing returned, till it was entirely empty ? 



But let us change the supposition a little. We will 

 suppose that, at the end of the first year, you had put on 

 as much manure as would have made that land produce 

 as much tobacco the second year as the first, say 50 lbs. 

 of Peruvian guano, 200 lbs. of superphosphate of lime, 

 and 10 loads of compost, half from the barn-yard manure, 

 and half from the muck swamp ; and suppose, further, 

 that you had continued such a course for the five years, 

 keeping the land up to its original productiveness, 

 1,200 lbs. a year to the last. Is it not clear that the 



