82 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



Experience lias shown that if vegetables of different classes are made to 

 follow each other, the soil will much longer retain its productiveness.- 

 Even when " exhausted" of some one or more of those ingredients neces- 

 eary for the healthy production of a particular plant, it is found to produce 

 others luxuriantly which do not require the lacking ingredients, or but very 

 minute portions of them And, by a most beautiful arrangement of phys- 

 ical causes and effects, when a plant is removed from the soil, and notwith- 

 standing its place is occupied by others, a process of restoration at once 

 commences to replace all that the absent plant has appropriated, and to 

 prepare the kindly bosom of the earth again for its reception. Nature 

 herself, in ministering to this beneficent end, becomes a great laboratory ; 

 and in her most ordinary, as well as her most unusual operations, she i* 

 constantly producing those chemical changes, and furnishing those chem- 

 ical ingredients, which restore what has been abstracted by man's cupid- 

 ity, or lost by his improvidence. The gentle rain brings down ammonia 

 and carbon to plants. The frost rives the solid rocks, to disengage their 

 fertilizing constituents. The sun, in his flaming path, looks down not only 

 to warm and give us light, but to perform functions in the vegetable econ- 

 omy without which all herbage, except a few miserable fungi, would per- 

 ish ; and to all he imparts their varied and beautiful coloring. The thun- 

 der which shakes the walls of cities, and strikes man with awe, brings to 

 our aid one of the most efficient promoters of vegetation. Even the burst- 

 ing volcano converts its fiery crater into a crucible and retort, and gives 

 off that gas which forms so large a portion of all the vegetable and animal 

 productions of the globe : and the wild winds, which strand navies in their 

 course, equally diffuse it over the earth. 



It follows from the above positions that naturally good lands* which aits 

 more or less exhausted will be gradually resuscitated by " rest," or an en- 

 tire exemption from tillage ; and hence the absurd idea that lands require 

 physical " rest," in the same sense in which the tired animal muscle re- 

 quires it, after continuous exertion. But, apart from the theciy, the prac- 

 tice of "resting" lands is inexpedient, for the following reasons: If a 

 plant is not continued 'on a soil until it consumes any of those inorganic 

 constituents necessary to its production if, on the other hand, it is suc- 

 ceeded by a plant which makes its heaviest drafts on those inorganic sub- 

 stances which its predecessor required the least of, and vice versa the 

 natural recuperative process above adverted to, aided by means which lose 

 to us none of the value of the crops, will repair the waste made by each 

 plant, before it again occupies the soil, in a judicious rotation. Hence, by 

 a rotation of crops, fertility can be indefinitely sustained, and the earth 

 each year return its increase. Thus the ends of "rest" are attained, with- 

 out its great and unprofitable sacrifices. 



To sustain the fertility of 'the soil, some portion of the crops of every 

 rotation must be converted into manure. These are the " aiding means" 

 above alluded to. They may be converted into green or animal manure 

 If the former, the whole crop is plowed under. If the latter, the crop is 

 nrst partly converted into animal manure, by animals depastured on it, and 

 than this animal manure, with the remaining vegetation, is plowed under. 

 The last is always the most economical method, on good lands,t becauje 

 the crop is worth almost as much for manure, after passing through the 



* I say "naturally good lands," for those entirely deficient in several of the necessary condiments of 

 ter'.ile soil might require ages of rest to obtain these constituents if, indeed, they ever would, by merely 

 natural causes. 



t I have limited the assertion to "pood lands," because a crop of green manure, turned under Rt the 

 proper stage of its growih, will undoubtedly make rather more manuie than in any other way ; and it may 

 be expedient many times to give poor lands all. This is especially true in the reclamation of barren land* 



