much of the time and ^vithdl•aw the energies of 

 tlie greatest minds from personal application to 

 interests which cannot be neglected with impu- 

 nity. That most vital interests have been neg- 

 lected ill your State, is matter which cannot be 

 denied, however much regretted ; but when we 

 direct attention to the causes of that neglect, we 

 cannot but express high respect for the gener- 

 ous feelings of the people. That Virginia has 

 not advanced, in either population or wealth, in 

 proportion to other States of tlie Union pos- 

 sessed originally of less natural advantages, 

 must be admitted ; and devoted as has been the 

 heart and hand of him who addresses those 

 whose friendship he warmly cherishes, they 

 cannot take amiss his advice to look their actual 

 and comparative situation Jirmly in the face. 

 The formation of your Society, we may hope, 

 as I before said, is the fore.shadowing event of a 

 most salutai-j- change, a counter-revolution 

 which may restore Virginia to the rank in the 

 confederacy which is due to her from relative 

 extent of tenitory, and more particularly from 

 relative position. 



If her soil has been exhausted by improvi- 

 dence, the materials are at hand to restore it — 

 of this truth you have been most ably advised 

 by your distinguished President — but in that 

 respect slie does not suffer by comparison as 

 much as is generally supposed. In tlie last 

 volume of the Ne^v-York State Agricultural So- 

 ciety, you will see it stated by its zealous and 

 efficient Secretary, Mr. O'Reilly, on authoritj- 

 not questioned or questionable, that such had 

 been tlie depreciation of the wheat crops, ow- 

 ing to exhaustion of the soil, con-sequent on ill- 

 judged farming, that the product of wheat lands 

 between Seneca Lake and Niagara River has 

 not, for the last three or four years, exceeded the 

 low average of eleven or twelve bushels per acre ! 

 Indeed, he had authority for declaring that in 

 reference to a single county (Seneca) possessing 

 unsurpassed natural capacity for producing 

 wheat, the average j-ield is uo\v not over ten 

 bushels per acre, on lands which twenty years 

 ago freely yielded twenty." Is the wheat crop 

 better, asked Mr. O'R., any where in Western 

 New- York tlian in Seneca ? Thus, Farmers of 

 Virginia, you see that other States have been 

 running the same career of improvident cultiva- 

 tion that you have, and with like results, " al- 

 ways taking out of the meal-tub, and never put- 

 ting in, will soon come to the bottom," is a 

 simple illustration by a wise man that any fool 

 may understand ; but ■while your generous na- 

 ture vk'ill forbid your deriving any consolation 

 from the knowledge that others have been 

 in their agricultural practices as incautious 

 as yourselves, it behooves me to draw your 

 attention, as I shall in some early future 

 number of the Farmers' Library with some 



minuteness, to what is now doing in New- York 

 to arrest the progress of agricultural exhaus- 

 tion, t3 enable her to hold on her course of 

 rapid growth in all that gives population, 

 wealth, power and political predominance to 

 States. To return, now, to Virginia. 



The most valuable of her unbounded resources 

 remain ; for there are yet her spacious baj's, fine 

 navigable rivers, her inexhaustible beds of iron, 

 coal, and beds of shells and marl, her internal 

 lakes of salt water, her forests and diversity of 

 soil, and central position on the Atlantic coast, 

 with more than ordinary temptation and facili- 

 ties for internal improvements. But, as we be- 

 fore said, there are other States than Virginia in- 

 terested in the views we shall present, for such a 

 member, bearing so large a share in the national 

 mass, cannot advance or recede wdthout aflect- 

 ing the whole body politic. In one connexion 

 her interests and fate are identified with all 

 whose staples are the same and produced by 

 the same species of labor. 



The subjoined tabular data will serve to show 

 the wide field of enterprise presented by Vir- 

 ginia, not only to her own citizens, but to emi- 

 grants who pass by Uie advantages there of- 

 fered, to seek far less certain comfort and fortune 

 in the central or more distant section of the Con- 

 tinent. With some intermingling and identity 

 along the lines of separation, Virginia is divided 

 into three natural divisions : the Eastern or al- 

 luvial, the Central or mountainous, and Western 

 or Ohio section. 



Time and space do not allo^v tis to compile 

 and present (as it might better answer the pur- 

 pose in hand, to do) the population of each 

 County, of each Division at the several periods; 

 but taking, first, the alluvial or "Lower Vir- 

 ginia," embracing thirty Counties, and it will be 

 found that they contained a population in 1810 

 of -^58,246 ; in 1820, 260,524 ; and in 1840, a popu- 

 lation of 273,240 — being an increase of only 

 14.994 in a period of thirty years. 



Here, then, we have a section of Virginia, 

 comprising an area of 8,875 square miles, of the 

 most anciently inhabited part of the State, on 

 which the population is distributed at the rate of 

 veiy little more than 30 to tlie square mile, and 

 on which the ratio of increase was only 1.05 — 

 one and one-fifdi per cent. — in forty years. 



It would be difficult, if not unpossible, to find 

 another equal surface of the earth — so abund- 

 antly supplied with navigable bays and tide- 

 water rivers. Here, too, opens, in many re- 

 spects, the finest bay of the American coast, 

 from Cape Honi to Labrador. It would be in 

 vain to ascribe this phenomenon in human popu- 

 lation to any defect of the soil, or insalubrity of 

 the climate. In an early volume of the Ameri- 

 can Farmer, it was .sllo^vn that in a certain area 

 of a tide-water eastern shore County of Mary- 



