234 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



A NEW DISCOVEBY BUT NOT A NEW IDEA. 



The discovery of the value of the leguminous crops 

 as fertilizers, and the method especially by means of 

 which their fertilizing properties are made possible, is 

 supposed to be of modern origin. This is true in so far 

 as the activity of certain nitrifying organisms which 

 have a symbiotic life with the legumes themselves is 

 concerned. The underlying idea, however, is fully set 

 forth by John Taylor, who almost a hundred years ago 

 published an agricultural journal under the name of 

 Arator (the plowman). John Taylor was a resi- 

 dent of Caroline County, Virginia, and a hundred 

 years ago was president of the Agricultural- Society of 

 Virginia. In these essays, which appeared in the 

 sixty-four numbers of the Arator, some of the funda- 

 mental principles of scientific agriculture as they are 

 understood to-day were first set forth. In one of his 

 essays Mr. Taylor says: 



Land in America affords little pleasure or profit, and ap- 

 pears in a progress of continually affording less. Virginia is 

 in rapid decline; land in New York formerly producing 

 twenty bushels to the acre now produces ten. Little profit can 

 be found in the present mode of agriculture of this country; 

 and I apprehend it to be a fact that it affords a bare subsist- 

 ence. Virginia is the southern limit of my inquiries, because 

 agriculture had there already arrived to its lowest state of deg- 

 radation. The land owners in this State are, with few ex- 

 ceptions, in low circumstances; the inferior rank of them 

 wretched in the extreme. Decline has pervaded all the States. 



These conclusions, if true, are awfully threatening to the 

 liberty and prosperity of a country whose hostage for both 

 is agriculture. An order of men earning a bare subsistence, 

 in low circumstances, and whose inferior rank is wretched in 

 the extreme, cannot possibly constitute a moral force adequate 

 to either object. It is therefore highly important to the agri- 



