SHEEP HUSBAVDRY IN THE SOUTH, 8l 



"other sources of advancement"- " new products" "ether branches of 

 industry" both to bring into use millions of acres of unproductive terri- 

 tory " admirably adapted to the raising of rich grasses," and to render 

 profitable and preserve the fertility of the tillage lands of the State, should 

 not have thought of wool growing or only thought of it, as it were, inci- 

 dentally at the very heel of a catalogue of farm products, and in refer- 

 ence solely to supplying the home want ! 



Indeed, the estimate which has been set upon sheep husbandry gener- 

 ally, and by all classes of agriculturists, South, is a source of unmixed sur- 

 prise to one acquainted with this pursuit, and with the resources of that 

 region for sustaining it. There appears among many, if I may credit your 

 own writers,* to be even a prejudice against sheep and sheep husbandry, 

 per se ! Is this because these animals bear a staple, and give employment 

 to manufactories, which have claimed the " protection " of Government, to 

 the prejudice, in the opinion of Southern politicians, of Southern interests 1i 

 [s any portion of it due to the scornful denunciations of the brilliant, but 

 eccentric and cynical, statesman of Roanoke, who " would at any time go 

 out of his way to kick a sheep" ] Or is it owing to the, in most respects, 

 justly popular writings of Col. Taylor, of Virginia'? Hon. Andrew Ste- 

 venson, of the same State, in a letter to John S. Skinner, Esq., says :| 



" The prejudice which the late Col. John Taylor, of Caroline (who, by-the-by, did more 

 for Agriculture than any man in America), had against sheep, has been the means of render- 

 ing this description of stock unpopular in many parts of the southern country. ... If 

 this distinguished patriot and statesman had lived at this day, he would have changed his 

 opinion." 



The impropriety and inexpediency of giving all the labor and prime land 

 of the country to the exclusive cultivation of one or two crops, even leav- 

 ing the deterioration of the lands, consequent on such a course, out of the 

 question, is forcibly set forth in the Reports above quoted from. But that 

 deterioration is an infinitely more fatal evil, both to individuals and States. 

 An injudicious course of cropping can be easily changed; but, if the land 

 is entirely impoverished, the change comes too late, until labor and capital 

 have been employed on its restoration. The tendency, nay, the absolute 

 connection as cause and effect, between the one-crop system and such dete- 

 rioration, has been proved by too sad an experience at the South is too 

 universally recognized and conceded to find a single questioner who pos- 

 sesses ordinary intelligence. Whether the consequent phenomena are 

 solved by the excretionary theory of De Candolle, or the more ordinary 

 one of the exhaustion of some of those substances which constitute the ne- 

 cessary food of plants, the facts presented are the same.|| The soil yields 

 constantly diminishing crops, until it becomes incapable of producing more 

 than scattering and feeble plants ; an'd the insect enemies of the latter, 

 which would perish if deprived of their aliment by the substitution of some 

 other plants, multiply in a constantly ascending rati \ 



* Hon. Andrew Stevenson, John S. Skinner, at. al . in Monthly Journal of Agriculture, &c. 



t If such protection has prejudiced the South, what stronger reason why she should remunerate herself 

 by appropriating a share of it ! 



J Monthly Journal of Agriculture, July, 1845. 



|| The theory of M. De Candolle, apparently so strongly supported by the experiments of M. Macaire, haa 

 found many belieyers. But the statements of the latter have been contradicted by M. Braconnet. M. Mir 

 bel, and finally are totally overthrown, in my judgment, by the experiments and investigations of Mr. Alfred 

 Gyde, of Scotland. Mr. Gyde shows that the minute excretions of plants have the same composition with 

 their tap; and he also watered plants with a solution of their excretions, not only without injury^but to 

 their manifest benefit ! For Mr. Gyde's able Prize Essay on this subject, see the Transactions of the High- 

 land and Agricultural Society of Scotland (March, 1846). I am not aware that this essay has been repub- 

 lished in our country. It certainly should be. 



f) Of the latter evil, the past year furnished a pregnant example. I saw it stated last winter, in the South 

 Carolinian (published at Columbia, S. C.), on the authority of an Unite*! States Senator, that the falling off 

 In the cotton crop would be enormous, by reason of the depredation of worms. This evil is constantly in 

 creasing, and must continue to, while the planter continues to provide aliment for each succeeding hord* 

 of destroyers, by continuing on the soil the plants on which they prey. 



L 



