FARMERS' REGISTER. 



165 



so fair a prospect of becoming the owner ol' a farm. 

 But the strange and wayward climate of England, 

 unpleasant and uncomfortable, as it may be in 

 many respect?, may give us a clue to the secret of 

 its lertility. With tlie latitude of Labrador, its 

 winters are less severe than (hose of Maryland. 

 Surrounded on all sides by contending oceans and 

 currents, it partakes of their variable climate — it 

 is a land jjossessing the atmosphere of the sea. 

 The gull and the tern fly over it as if it were a 

 part of their possessions, and the Solan goose and 

 other eea-birds not only nestle among the beetling 

 rocks, but their notes are heard in every part of the 

 island. Within three days' sail of En.gland, the 

 fogs and drizzling rains commenced. My journal 

 tells me there was but one day out of forty in 

 which it did not rain during some portion of the 

 day. I heard no thunder, nor did the rain fall in 

 torrents as with us, but light showers were conti- 

 nually sprinkling the earth like heavy dews — then 

 the sun would shine tor half an hour, throwing 

 its rays in fitful streams through the passing 

 clouds, giving slight indications of fair weather, 

 which soon ended in disappointment. There is 

 no calculating on a dry day in England. An um- 

 brella is almost as necessary an appendage to an 

 Englishman as a hat. It is no wonder that he is 

 enraptured with the bright clear sky of Italy, for 

 he was born among fogs, and has all his lifetime 

 been looking through a haze. He judges by con- 

 trast. Others have told the tale of the azure 

 skies and balmy air of Rome and Venice, and his 

 imagination has been fired by the theme ; hence 

 he conceives no sun so bright, no air so soft. Had 

 Carolina been as accessible, and could he as easily 

 have made the contrast, he would, if not blinded 

 by prejudice, have admitted that no Italian sky- 

 exceeded that of our own southern land. Men 

 may boast of having chmbed the Alps to see the 

 sun rise from the mountain of Riga, or set in the 

 Adriatic, yet 1 am either so prejudiced or old 

 fashioned as to believe that the poet or the painter 

 may go to the ends of the world and find no fairer 

 sky for the embellishment of a picture than that 

 presented during summer, along our Southern 

 Atlantic coast. But to return to the foggy climate 

 of England. It has appeared to me that these in- 

 cessant slight showers in a high northern latitude, 

 (where the nights are so short, and the continu- 

 ance of twilight so long, that I find it noted in my 

 journal that I was reading by daylight at half 

 past ten in the evening, and resumed my book at 

 half past two — leaving but four hours of night) — 

 contribute, in a considerable degree, to the abun- 

 dant productions of the soil. The sun, during the 

 long days of summer, imparts sufficient warmth 

 to the nourishment of the plants, and these are 

 continually kept fresh and green by nature's wa- 

 tering pot. [t is true, the early part of the summer 

 of my visit (1838,) was characterised as rainy in 

 every part of Europe, still it was not regarded in 

 England as a very striking exception to their 

 ordinary seasons. To the fogs and drizzling rains 

 together with the absence of to9 bright a light, I 

 ascribed that rich dark greeh of the fields which I 

 have never witnessed in any other country — the 

 scent of the flowers was, lor the same reason, 

 stronger and longer retained — the groves were full 

 of melody — ihe goldfinch and the thrush seemed 

 to sing sweeter alter every passing shower, and the 

 skylark carolled high in the air, in spite of the 

 drizzling mist. 



But, in addition to a favorable climate, the soil 

 of England has the benefit of a judicious tillage. 

 I was particularly struck with the system, almost 

 universally adopted in regard to. the rotation of 

 crops. It should be remarked that they never 

 cultivate two successive crops of grain on the came 

 field. Although physiologista have not been able 

 fully to account for the fact, that the successive 

 cultu'ation of grain or vegetables exhausts the soil 

 whilst a change to different product does not impo- 

 verish the land to any considerable extent, yet it 

 is now universally admitted, by ail good husband- 

 men, that this is the case. Some have ascribed 

 this to the exhaustion of the proper food of the 

 plant in consequence of its cultivation during 

 successive years, whilst Decandolle, Macaire and 

 others have accounted for it on the doctrine thai 

 plants exude from their roots certain substances 

 poisonous to plants of the same variety, which in 

 time renders the earth unfit for their cultivation. 

 (See January number of the Southern Cabinet, p. 

 17.) As toil) oars perdrlx doyed on the appetite 

 of the Frenchman, so the teeming earth longs for 

 a change of food, and vyithholds her fruitfulness 

 unless she be indulged. It has often been inquired 

 why is it that a forest which has long been covered 

 with a growth of pine, when cut down does not 

 spring up again in pine, but in oak, gum, and 

 hickory, and vice versa. The fiicts, in a majority 

 of instances, are so. All plants spring from seed — 

 there can be no spontaneous production. Omnia 

 ah ova is a doctrine as old as the days of Linnaeus, 

 and nature has never departed Irom it. May it 

 not then be that nature, after having for ages 

 nourished one kind of tree, has exhausted the 

 properties of the soil adapted to that kind of pro- 

 duction, and when a new forest is to be created, 

 imparts its influence (o trees of a different kind, 

 better suited to its present state, and withholding 

 its lertility from that to which it is no longer adapt- 

 ed. Be this as it may, the English farmer acts 

 on the principle of the necessity of a rotation ol" 

 crops. The result from this and other judicious 

 modes of culture has been an increase of three fold. 

 In Carolina, we have adopted the opposite course. 

 Many fields have been planted in Indian corn 

 since the days of the revolution, and the result has 

 been that we have retrograded from forty bushels 

 per acre to eight, and often less. 



I will now give the method of English culture in 

 regard to the 



Rotation of crops. 



1st year. Fallow crop. Irish potatoes — beans 

 or turnips. The potatoes, as is the case in high 

 northern latitudes, produce small stalks, and are 

 consequently planted much nearer in the rows than 

 with us. Endless varieties have been produced 

 from seed. 



The beans, adapted to field culture, are the kinds 

 usually called horse bean (Faba vulgaris.) Hun- 

 dreds of acres are cultivated with this bean, and its 

 numerous varieties, and the product is immense. 

 It is used as food for cattle. I have never known 

 it to thrive equally well in any part of America, 

 probably owing to our warm summers. In our 

 southern states especially, the pods in general do 

 not fill well, and 1 doubt whether it is calculated 

 to be a productive crop. There is, however, one 

 variety from the south of France, called the win- 

 ter bean, (Za Feverole cVhimr,) which is remark- 



