36 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



tries, should be tried not because they are from the North, (which in itself is a strong ob- 

 jection,) but merely because their good qualities are known, and possibly some such granee 

 may as well suit a more southern dime. And such. I trust, is red clover, the best^of all 

 green and manuring crops. For although this was long held to belong to the North only, I 

 nave fully experienced that its locality and the perfection of its growth are fixed much more 

 by peculiarity of soil than by latitude. Not more than twenty years ago it was as general 

 a belief in Lower Virginia, as now in South Carolina, that there the soil was too scanty and 

 the sun too hot to raise red clover. But since marling and liming have made many of theso 

 oils calcareous, it is found that neither the sandy soil nor hot and dry climate forbid the 

 raising excellent and profitable crops of clover. And so hereafter it will be found iu South 

 Carolina."* 



In a Report by a Committee of the Milton Agricultural Society, (em- 

 bracing adjacent parts of Laurens and Newberry Districts, S. C.) made to 

 the State Society in 1843, they state : 



" Our native grasses, except the crab grass, are of the poorest kind, principally sedge. Of 

 the artificial grasses, some trials have been made with red clorer and herds-grass. t On rich 

 lots the first appears to succeed veiy w r ell. For alternating with tillage crops we do not 

 know of its having been tried ; but our impression is, that without manuring more highly 

 than is customary here, it will not answer. We are not aware that it has ever been sowed 

 with gypsum. The herds-grass, as far as it has been tried, appears to succeed very well on 

 the bottoms that border our branches and creeks. "J 



Lawrence and Newberry are not in the tide-water region, but so far as 

 the effect of climate alone is concerned, their testimony has an equal 

 bearing. 



I have little doubt that red clover may be cultivated on good, rich soils 

 even in the States south of North Carolina, and may possibly become, un- 

 der some circumstances, a profitable crop in their rotations ; but, as has 

 been already remarked, it will not do as tijirst crop on very meager soils, 

 in any climate and still less so, I apprehend, on such soils south of lati- 

 4ude 34. It is not, therefore, the crop which you need, to cheaply ame- 

 liorate your poor and exhausted soils, to fit them either for grazing or for 

 tillage. Grant that such soils can be fitted to produce it, as Mr. Iluifiri 

 Suggests, by the application of lime or marl,|| these manures will be found 

 .expensive, can be but slowly obtained in quantities sufficient to apply to 

 large tracts, and, besides, when the soil is sufficiently ameliorated to carry 

 clover, it will carry most if not all of your ordinary tillage crops. Though 

 ;doYer would aid materially in the rotation, in sustaining or even improv- 

 ing the fertility superinduced by lime or any other fertilizer, it is not, and 

 cannot be made the original fertilizer on the sterile sands of warm climates. 

 When we talk, therefore, of the initiatory steps by which such soils shall 

 be brought from a state of barrenness to a state of production, clover does 

 not come within the category of appropriate agents. 



Though red clover ranks in the first class, if not the first in that class, 

 on appropriate soils, as a grazing and manuring crop, I have never regard- 

 ed it as indispensable as what the lawyers would style a sine qua non 

 even in sustaining fertility anywhere except on rich calcareous wheat 

 lands, where a severe and exhausting rotation is resorted to. Where 

 wheat is taken from the soil at least every alternate year, for ten, fifteen, 

 01 twenty years, without any manure, excepting the intervening crop, and 

 the droppings of animals depastured on it, clover will better sustain the 

 land in the ultimately fatal struggle, than perhaps any other green na- 



* Ruffin's Ajrricultural Survey of S. C.. 1843, p. 8t. 



t This should be the Agrostis stricta or vulgaris the Red Top of the North. Some writers deftj'm.-ite B 

 ts the one species, some aa the other. 



t Ruffin's Agricultural Survey of S. C., 1843 ; Appendix, p. 9. 



|| Unless, however, the soil contains more organic matter than I suppose to be the cane with many <* 

 your a,ndy soils, theory and practice both show that lime will not prove the proper manure. Though* ex- 

 eecdingly valuable in its p.ace, experience shows that it is no- agricultural panacea. I shall allude to this sub- 

 jcct move fullv u a subseruent letter 



