76 AGRICULTURE. 



" In Virginia the usual crops are Indian corn and 

 wheat alternately, as long as the land will produce 

 them ; and, in parts where tobacco is cultivated, 

 several crops of it are taken in succession, before 

 any grain is sown. No one states the average of 

 that extensive flat country in Virginia, lying below 

 the head of tide- water, at more than five or six 

 bushels ; and in those fertile and beautiful valleys 

 among the mountains, in which ignorant cultivators 

 have not yet resided sufficiently long to have en- 

 tirely exhausted the soil, the produce may not be 

 less than twelve bushels the acre." 



These specimens of agricultural skill will not be 

 adduced as proof of the favourite national position, 

 that " we are the most enlightened people on the face 

 of the globe ;" and the less so, as a lapse of eighteen 

 years has not entirely weaned us from ancient 

 habits ; for neither on the Maryland peninsula, nor 

 in Eastern Virginia, is there any material alteration 

 in their mode of culture, excepting what may have 

 arisen from the fact that, having no more fresh land 

 to exhaust, they are now obliged to recur to old field, 

 and are, of course, annually suffering the new and 

 increased penalties of former improvidence. On 

 the western shore of Maryland, in the northern 

 parts of Delaware, and in Pennsylvania, New-Jer- 

 sey, and New- York, the state of things is better; 

 clover has been substituted for (what Mr. Strickland 

 calls) rubbish pasture, and the root husbandry is 

 encroaching on summer fallows ; which we regard 

 as a decisive step towards a regular and judicious 

 rotation of crops. 



After this brief statement of the past and present 

 state of home agriculture, let us anticipate the fu- 

 ture. We cannot believe that, favoured as we arc 

 with a temperate climate, a productive soil, an in- 

 quiring, reflecting, and independent yeomanry, and 

 civil institutions which favour and protect all the 

 developments of industry and genius, we shall long 



