THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



355 



writer almost invariaMy concludes in language to 

 this efft'ct- that, " under this eysiem. my land is 

 consiantly im()roving.'' IniieeJ, 1 can conceive ol 

 no vaiuahle pur[)ose which can poesihly be an- 

 swered by a roiaiioo, unless it be one or ihe other 

 of those staled above. Now the position vvliich I 

 take at this time, and which I look in my pubhehed 

 piece, is ihit a'l croijs, izruin, tirafs, and ol' every 

 oiher kind, when removed from the soil, are ex- 

 hausitrs, s me lo a greaier and ohers to a less 

 extent, but generally in propoition to the amouni 

 removed. This [losition I regard as almost sell- 

 evident. Il there be any axiom in ngricuhure, 1 

 think this ought to be one. F^r what is it that 

 has wasted away the I'eriiliiy of our lands, uniil 

 in many instances it is almost totally destroyed ? 

 Is it not ihai constant and injudicious cropping to 

 which ihey have been suljecied — taking oH every 

 thing (hat we could lay hands on, and supplying 

 nothing in reiurn'? Here, then, is an evil inflici- 

 ed upon the land, and it is cropping that has done 

 it. Now can it be conceived liiat subsequent crop- 

 ping will repair the iijury ol'preuious cropping ? I 

 will believe ihis when I can prevail on n)yfell to 

 think that the riiilit way to repair a iholt is lo go 

 and sieal moie. Or, as in this present controversy, 

 Mr. Peyton gives me a drulibing, and, by way ol 

 60o:hing my pains, and ihus repairing the injury, 

 the editor steps lorward and gives me a more se- 

 vere one. " Noll me tangere''^ — here is Laiin, 

 but I will translate il — " hands off, ilyou please." 

 This, ihen, is one respect in which \ am uiterly op- 

 posed lo all rotations; r.nd I must remain in the same 

 mind uniil the ingenuity ol ihese or other shrewd 

 farmers can convince me that one irijury can be 

 repaired by anoher. ^' Judceus ^pella credat. 

 non egoy ThisLitin is a liiiie harder than the 

 oilier; I therefore leave it Xo Mr. Peyton to trans- 

 late. I am also utterly opposed to rotations on ihe 

 ecore thai ihere aie in the soil certain inaredientt 



in Roanoke county, (mark the position,) when 

 they refuse to produce grain, having, ae 1 suppose, 

 parted from all the peculiar ingredients fitted for 

 that crop, will nevertheless produce large crops of 

 clover. Now, although my present location is 

 so near a ciiy that i snuff the snioke of it every 

 time the wind sets strong from that quar.er, yet 

 I happened to be born and reared to a large youth 

 in a county adjoining the one which numhera 

 Mr. Pi^yion among its citizens, and therelbre I 

 know "a thing or two*' about these very lands. 

 !i IS true that I do not know the pariicuUtr farm 

 which JVlr. Peyton occupies; nor have 1 ttie 

 plea?ure of knowing that genileman huiiself, 

 but I speak of the general characier ol the lands 

 in ihat neighborhood ; and 1 do know ihnt they 

 vveie oriyiiially exuberanily rich. They are a 

 part of those '* valley lands," which have a lime- 

 stone foundation lor iheir substiatum ; lands, as is 

 proved in Kemucky and Pennsylvania, peculiarly 

 adapted tu the grasses, and to the growth of 

 clover in paiticular. I have even seen clover 

 growing luxuriantly in the woods on those lands. 

 Indeed cover, although one of the artificial 

 ifrasses, seems a'most indigenous lo that soil. 

 It really seems almost as natural lor clover to 

 grow there, as lor crab-grass to grow here. Now, 

 in a soil naUirally rich, and at the same time na- 

 turally disposed to produce clover, I am not fur- 

 prised thai it should grow, and grow vigorously, 

 on a soil which reluses to produce an article to 

 which il is not so congenial. The old worn-out 

 tobacco lole are recruited, 1 presume, in the same 

 way, and on the same principle. And ae lo Lie- 

 big's Goiiingen fiirm, (I wish it was near enough 

 lor me to visit ii,) il proves just nothing at all, or, 

 if possible, less ihan noihinji. It seems that a 

 man, in his eagerness " to obtain potash, planted 

 his whole farm wi'h wormwood." Wheiher he 

 got a crop or not, we are not told, and we are not 



wliich may be so taken up by any one crop as lold a great many other ihinjis which, in a matter 



to leave the soil in a state unfit to reproduce ihai 

 came crop. If there be anv exception to this, ii 

 is perhaps a crop of flax. But Mr. Peyton tells 

 us " that a single swallow does not make a sum- 

 mer." Here then is proof positive, that abso- 

 lute reliance cannot be placed upon a single ex- 

 ception ; or if this proof is not al.'"eady sirontr 

 enough, " my L')rd Coke" will help il out. Bn\ 

 when 1 speak of a soil, I of course mean infertile 

 one; liir a poor exhausted soil will produce no 

 crop of any kind. This, if I um'ersiand him, is 

 the main ground on which Mr. Peyton relies in 

 his plea lor rotations. In support of i', he stales 

 it as a notorious fact, that lands in his section ol 

 country, when so exhausted that Ihey will noi 

 produce grain enough to pay for Ihe culiivaiion, 

 will nevertheless produce large crops of clover. 

 Old tobacco lots also are restored in Ihe same 

 way. Liebig also helps him out with a cjse in 

 which some one near Go tingen, (a great way 

 off.) by raising a crop of wormwood, so exhaust- 

 ed the soil of its potash, that " it refused to bear 

 grass for many years." Now, here is a hard 

 case, Mr. Peyton, Liebig, the Goitingen farmer, 

 and, what is much harder BiiW, facts against me. 

 And what shall I do wiih it? I will try to dis- 

 pose of the facts, and if I succeed in this, 1 will 

 leave Mr. Peyton, Liebig and the Goitingen man 

 to dispose of themselves. 

 The first fact is that lands near the Bifx Lick, 



ol authority, i should like to know ; but I presume 

 he did get one, lor he so ruined his land that it re- 

 fused to bear grass for several \ears. Refused to 

 bear what ? We are lo'd grass. B'lt grass was 

 not ihe last crop that it produced ! When I came 

 to this, I thought that Mr. Peyton must have 

 made a misiake in his quotation, or that the 

 printer must have made one. But no! All is 

 lisht. Liebig says that, aller producing the 

 wormwood, the land refused to bear grass. Now 

 why a roiationist should refer to this as authority, 

 I cannot conceive. fVoruiwood, surely, is not the 

 same thing as grass. In appearance they are very 

 different, and in taste still more so. Why, then, 

 should the wormwood incapacitate the land to 

 bear grass, a thing so different from itself? But 

 It seems that the potash was so taken up by (he 

 wormwood, that none was left for the grass. Pot- 

 ash, then, cannot be one of the peculiar ingre- 

 dients which is necessary to one crop and not to 

 another. Here it was necessary lo at least twr> 

 crops, and, for aught I know, equally necessary to 

 twenty cops besides. And so it falls in with my 

 theory, that the same ingredient, which I have 

 taken the liberty of caWiog fertility, is just as ne- 

 ceesary lo one crop as to anoiher. With this 

 slatenient, 1 am at no loss to account for the fail- 

 ure in the man's grass cropc. The wormwood ex- 

 hausted the lands not only of their potash, but of 

 [heAr fertilifii, a ihing which in my estimation ia 



