179. 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 3 



acres on the opposite side of my house was not 

 long after laid down in orchEird grass and highland 

 meadow oat; which the severe grazing to v/hich 

 that, as well as the other has been subjected, has 

 supplanted chiefly with the former growths, of all 

 others the most untiring, and best tor permanent 

 hard grazing. The only aid which they have had 

 during the whole period, has been an annual plas- 

 tering of a bushel per acre, and a slight top-dress- 

 ing of ashes and coarse larm-yard manure. 



Eut why need we look beyond our yards, even 

 in the sandiest and least propitious situations, ]br 

 illustrations of the ii\ct, that a little time, and ma- 

 nure, aided by the shade and fertilizing properties 

 of that invaluable tree, the locust, sutiice for these 

 effects'? My first experiment, upon such land as 

 the hills above referred to, commenced about five 

 years ago, when I wished to enclose eight or ten 

 acres of such land for a lew pet deer. This was 

 effected by availing myself of two gullies running 

 considerably more than a moity of'the circuraler- 

 ence, upon the exterior edge of which a very mo- 

 derate fence sufficed (or would have sufficed, for 

 they have not yet occupied it,) for those nimble 

 animals, whilst the remainder of course claimed a 

 higher fence. The sassafras and locust grubs, 

 which infested it to a greater degree than any land 

 I ever saw, were thinned out to the most promising, 

 which were suffered to remain — the land well pre- 

 pared with a hoe crop and sov^n in the fall with 

 orchard and highland meadow oat seeds. Tlie 

 whole of it has since been top-dressed, and a small 

 portion limed. The sassafras and locust sprouts 

 to which the stock Avere at first invited by a slight 

 sprinkling, after rain, with salt, have entirely yield- 

 ed to the hoof and the tooth, whose continual per- 

 secution seem only to be hastening the above-men- 

 tioned process of substitution. En passant, and 

 particularly until the land is completely set, they 

 should be excluded for a year or two, until many 

 of the seeds are ripe. This sprinij has witnessed a 

 similar conquest of about equal extent of the hill- 

 side upon which the successfijl experiment of the 

 early sowing of the clover with rye was made, and 

 the labor of enclosing which, very substantially, 

 was reduced to a trifle by the same means. It 'is 

 true, Mr. Edhor, these results are not to be attain- 

 ed without some time and some labor. Let no 

 one expect good grass on poor land, and that in a 

 single year, or two. If he will onlv look at the la- 

 bor bestowed on this subject, in England, in the 

 process of turfinir land for pasture, whilst he will 

 renounce such folly, he will be still more convinced 

 of the importance of the object. Truly I consi- 

 der it to agriculture, of all others, the most so; and 

 my conviction was much strengthened by an agri- 

 cultural visit, which amongst others, I made hist 

 summer to the justly celebrated Earl Stimson of 

 New York, in whose praise it may suffice to say 

 that I found him all that a farmer and a gentleman 

 should be. His entire system, his rotations, his 

 provision, preparation and application of manures, 

 and the admirable arrangements of his fiirmstead 

 have all been minutely'and accurately described 

 by an abler observer, in the first volume of your 

 Register, and need not be repeated by me. 'His 

 most briliant results, however, even the one almost 

 incredible to us, of 160 bushels corn to the acre, 

 seemed to be resoluble chiefly into grass, and the 

 abundant supplies of rich manure which every 

 crop receives therefrom, rather than any superiority 



of cultivation. Yet, with a blind fatuity, we rea- 

 son and act as if the earth was made only for corn, 

 wheat, and tobacco, and would continue to pro- 

 duce these, in interminable succession, by scourg- 

 ing alone, instead of from alimentary manures 

 which can be produced of the requisite quantity 

 and quality by grass alone.- But, Mr. Editor, can 

 any man, having within him the bowels of com- 

 passion, at this moment, when v/e have not had a 

 drop of rain kv more than three weeks, ride along 

 our roads and see our starved herds, in whose rag- 

 ged carcasses and unfed sides the cornstalks have 

 barely kept a little lifethrov.gh the winter, contend- 

 ing like "fire-eyed disputants" for here and there 

 a scattered blade of grass, without having them 

 wrung with pity? Old mother earth, too, claims 

 her share, for she seems to cry out, "spare! oh, 

 spare me!'' and receives only for reply, " a la 

 niorty "This way no hope is," and who pur- 

 sues it, pursues inevitable sierility and poverty. 

 But where is the refugel We must have milk 

 and butter and meat lor our fiimilies, I say, \n 

 grass. To its attainment, devote even your best 

 lands and all your manure, and fear not but that it 

 will soon repaA'you with compound interest in the 

 increased fertility of all your land, and abundance 

 of all your crops. Man)' a swamp and many a 

 ravine, too narrow, and too detatched, or too much 

 shaded, for corn, and therefore deemed useless, 

 will give you tons of the richest hay, and manure 

 annually, a surface equal to its own. It is the 

 first step alone which cosis — the rest are compara- 

 tively easy; and as they are followed up, I venture 

 to predict, from my own experience, that crops of 

 grain will increase pretty much in the ratio, {sub 

 modo, of course,) in which portions of the land are 

 are abstracted li'om culiivation for grass. Wliilst 

 nature, then, if not through all, through so many 

 at least of her works, seems to cry aloud, "grass, 

 grass!" shall we continue obdurately deaf to her 

 invocation. 



As my sheet is growing short, Mr. Editor, I can- 

 not, perhaps, better fill up the remaining space, 

 than with a brief descripiion of an innovation 

 adopted by me for the last six months in the pri- 

 mum mobile, the principle of labor, upon which all 

 our operalions must depend. Resolved, for the 

 balance of a somewhat restless and migratory life, 

 to keep, as fiir as circumstances will permit, at 

 home, it occurred to me, that the amount hereto ■ 

 fore appropriated to the wages of an overseer, dis- 

 tributed in premiums according to service and 

 merit amongst my negroes — in other words, that 

 avarice, combined with pride and vanity, strong 

 principles even in the breast of a negro, if judici- 

 ously directed, might form slimidi noi less efficient 

 than those to which they had been previously sub- 

 jected; that is to say, that compulsor}' might thus 

 be beneficially substituted by voluntary labor. 

 With this view, their unanimous assent having 

 been previously accoided to the authority of the 

 foreman and the justice of his awards, my force, 

 consisting of about twenty efi'ectives of all sorts, 

 were divided into three classes, according to effi- 

 ciency, age and sex, and made subject to degrada- 

 tion to a lower, or advancement to ahighergrade, 

 according to delinquency or desert. The com- 

 pensation is allotted to the classes in full shares 

 to the first; half shares to the second; quarter 

 shares to the third; any amount of forfeiture in- 

 curred in a class to be divided amongst its mem- 



