1838] 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



199 



tried there, and the eflfects seen, it is impossible 

 but its use will be rapidly extended. Absence lioin 

 home prevented our seeinc; the letter ol' J. D. until it 

 had been printed; or these remarks would have been 

 made at the time of its publication. 



FROM THE PROCKEDINGS OF THE I'LANTERS 

 SOCIETY OF MONTICELLO, S. C. 



Report of the Petitioning Committee. 



To the Monticello Planters' Society— 



At your last meeting, a committee was appoint- 

 ed 10 petition the Legislature, on belialf ol' this 

 Society, that it be incorporated, and such other 

 encouragement given, as the State Assembly, in 

 its wisdom, might deem proper. It surely is with- 

 in the ordinary range of legislative business, to 

 .grant Acts of Incorporation : but what is meant 

 when the planter asks for legislative encourage- 

 ment'? On this point, your committee, acting in 

 perlect accordance with your expressed wishes, 

 prayed the state to adopt some course, which 

 would advance the agricultural interests of the 

 whole community — such a course too, as in its re- 

 sults, could not have been construed into an act 

 of partial legislation. We petitioned that body 

 more particularly to appoint a stale agricultural 

 surveyor, who should be required to survey our 

 territory, that its entire geological and mineralogi- 

 cal resources might thus be developed; and also 

 asked that agriculture should Ibrm a necessary 

 branch of education in our schools and colleges. 

 The committee were well aware, that this society, 

 of itself, required no legislative aid, farther than 

 the mere act of incorporation would imply: it will 

 be seen by the last "acts of assembly," this re- 

 quest has been granted, but nothing beyond that 

 was accomphshed. The agricultural movements 

 of South Carolina, in her legislative capacity, are 

 unquestionably to be regarded in any other light 

 than creditable, or, we miirlit add, even respectable. 



In similar instances, what has been the action 

 of a k.w of the other states of the confederacy? 

 In 1836, iMaine imported 150,000 bbls. of flour: 

 her legislature votes a bounty to the wheat-grow- 

 er; and the consequence is, her barren lands yield 

 a doubled produce for domestic consumption, lo'dh 

 a large surplus for exportation. Connecticut has 

 also been benefited in her agriculture, through her 

 legislators acting as if they thought the planter 

 within the pale of some legislative protection or 

 cognizance. Massachusetts, within the last two 

 years, has ordered a general agricultural survey of 

 her domain. North Carolina, " according to the 

 report of the civil engineer in 1826," had a vast 

 quantity of lands "covered with waters," and 

 susceptible of being reclaimed: recently, she has 

 voted upwards of $200,000, to be expended in 

 draining off these waters, that lands so fertile 

 might be thrown into cultivation. The Editor ol' 

 the Farmers' Register (from whose periodical 

 much of the detail in this report is collected) has 

 been using no ordinary zeal and ability to bring 

 this subject in its proper bearing before the Vir- 

 ginia assembly; but Virginia as yet has done poj 

 dbly less in thirf way, than South Carolina. 



Not twelve years ago, "the Agricultural Socie- 

 ty of South Carolina" was (bunded; it promised 

 exceeding l;ur things, though like many other 

 bubble societies, it scarcely outlived ils organiza- 

 tion. About the same time. Dr. Cooper presented 

 a document to the legislature, in which he very 

 forcibly urged the expediency of establishing an 

 agricultural professorship in the college over 

 which he then presided: the subject-matter of that 

 document, we presume, was perhaps too utilita- 

 rian for the consideration of legislators, whose 

 tenure of office was held at the pleasure of those 

 very planters, whose social and political condition 

 the report was designed no doubt to reach and im- 

 prove. If there was a necessity then for an ame- 

 lioration of the planter's pursuit, your committee 

 would suppose the occasion more imperatively de- 

 mands it now, when our lands are impoverished, 

 and our population absolutely driven, by state poli- 

 cy, to seek their fortunes in the fields of the west. 

 \Vhen Washington recommended an American 

 agricultural board on the English plan, he in all 

 likelihood could have little dreamed that the al- 

 most unbounded territory, to which he gave birth, 

 would in less than a century be importing bread- 

 stuffs?, to support a comparatively sparse popula- 

 tion; yet such is the fact, disgraceful as it may 

 seem. It is proper, it is obligatory on the states 

 within their own limits, to apply the remedy to 

 counteract this or any like evil: and so far as 

 South Carolina is concerned, your committee con- 

 ceive that, as she takes the usual care to collect 

 the landholder's tax, she should be willing to re- 

 turn some sort of equivalent. 



All which is respectfully submitted. 



B. F. Davis, Chairman, pro tern. 



March 7th, 1838. 



CORRECTION OF A MISTAKE. CROPS ON THE 

 RIVA.NNA. 



To the Editor of the Fanners' Register. 



3Iay 16th, 1838. 



On a late visit from an old and highly esteemed 

 friend of the county of Cul|)eper, who, from the 

 situation and character of my farm, was led to en- 

 quire into the authorship of a piece signed "Ri- 

 vanna," appearing in the January No., 1836, of 

 your Register — I'was induced to correct a false 

 impression which I learned had been made in his 

 section of country, as to the produce in corn of a 

 certain field, the subject of the above communica- 

 tion. This impression was derived from a differ- 

 ence in the mode, not of measuring, but ol'count- 

 ing measure, in the two countries— in his, by 

 bushels, in ours, by barrels— where, as in Cul- 

 peper, we allow five bushels of shelled corn, and 

 twice that quantity of ears, to the barrel. The 

 specification ears, was used merely in exclusion of 

 nubbings, of which there was the usual propor- 

 tion (not counted) in this crop. 



In making this explanation, I am constrained 

 by a sense oT the imporiance of particularity in all 

 such communication^— considering a departure 

 from it the height of injuJlice to our fraternity, 

 and to the cautje ul agricultural improvement— 



