400 



THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



as sirangers ta you, but are perfectly willing to 

 allow the introduction of a Frenchman, the 

 celebrated Chaptal, who it is apparent is an uner 

 stranjrer to you. Surely, Mr. Turner, il'you will 

 allow me to change my form of address liom the 

 editor to yoursellj surely you perpetrated this bull 

 volunt^arily, as a modest assurance to rne of your 

 Irish descent. 



Your next preliminary is equally obnoxious to 

 criticism. You protest atrainst my nice distinc- 

 tions, aud endeavor to avert the force of my ar- 

 guments by confounding all distinctions. You 

 first introduce a set of technical synonymes. 

 illusirative ofyour idea, and as a sort of'analogical 

 argument, and then complain of" my critical dis- 

 linctiotis, which are introduced to show that the 

 words used by you, have no such signification 

 as you claim for them. In your first essay of last 

 May, you say that fertilibj is as necessary to one 

 crop as another, that ihls fertility, a term under- 

 stood by every body, is expressed by HifTerent 

 writers by different names. Professor Webster 

 (you think it is) calls it humus, Prolessor Dana 

 geine, and Liebig ammonia. In reply I pointed 

 out to you the absurdity in which you were in- 

 volved by this confusion of technical terms. I 

 suggested to you, that the term fertility ^s used 

 by you to express the great desideratum of pro- 

 duction for all crops could not be synonymous 

 with humus, because there were plants, wheat 

 for instance, which would not thrive in a soil 

 enriched with hunms alone. I stateii further, that 

 in the pure humus soils of Brazil and in the soils 

 of Europe formed of mouldeied wood, (pure 

 humus,) it had been found that the stalks droop- 

 ed prematurely. That the assigned cause of the 

 failure was, that the strength of the stalk is due 

 to the silicaie of potash, and the grain requires the 

 phosphate of magnesia, neiiher of which sub- 

 stances are afi'orded by a soil of pure humus. 

 These and other difficulties suggested, you have 

 neither acknowledged nor explamed, but content 

 yourself with modestly insisting that I shall aban- 

 don all nice and critical distinctions, and allow 

 you to use the words fertility and manure in your 

 own way. 



Having disposed of these preliminaries, the 

 reverend genilemLU looses himself Irom the moor- 

 ings which he has hugged so closely for nearly 

 two columns, and boldly commits himself to the 

 rocks and waves of an unknown sea. The in- 

 stinctive law of self-preservation, however, soon 

 comes to his reliefj and the flag of distress is 

 unfurled. He protests against being treated 

 as a " long, low, black, rakish, piratical-looking 

 schooner,"' and denies flatly that lie is opposed to 

 every kind of rotation, or even attempted when 

 it was undefended to founder it. But here the 

 gentleman resorts to one of those " ruses du 

 guerre," of which he discourses so approvingly. 

 He erects a man of straw that he may display his 

 valor in knocking it down. You totally misap- 

 prehend me, Mr. Turner, if you suppose that I 

 lor one moment thought you so blinded by your 

 theory as to discard hoed crops as cleansers. 

 That was not the character of my objections, 

 nor does the distinction claimed by you in the 

 present instance, though you are in general a foe to 

 ail distinctions, blunt the point or weaken the 

 force of a single argument which I have advanced 

 in support of rotation. As to Mr. Ruffin's views 



on this point, I leave him to speak for himself. 

 Your position, as defined in ifie first piece, was 

 that you saw no objection to a succession of the 

 same crops on the same land, provided there was 

 fertility enough to sustain it. That you had no 

 great fkiih in any rotation from which regular 

 supplies of manure were excluded, and that it 

 niide liitle difierence what the successive crops 

 were, provided there was a constant supply of 

 enricfiing materials equal in amount to the crop 

 which was removed. To this I replied, that it 

 was a common observation of farmers in this 

 quarter, that when lands are worn down with 

 long-continued and severe cropping so that their 

 yield in unun is not worih the labor ol cultivation, 

 they will produce a luxuriant crop of clover. 

 That not less common is the observation that old 

 tobacco lots, when tliey grow tired of the crop 

 which they have borne lor a long succession of 

 years, and refuse to produce the same heavily, 

 however well culiivated or highly manured, can 

 only be restored as tobacco lots by a roiaiion. Let 

 us see now how the learned president meets 

 these facts in his rejoinder. He sets out by pre- 

 mising that he " knows a thing or two" of the re- 

 gion where these examples are located ; that it is 

 a limestone region of exuberant fertility, to which 

 clover is so natural that he has seen it growing 

 luxuriantly in the woods. He considers clover 

 as more congenial to the Roanoke lands than the 

 grain and tobacco crops, and hence accounts lor 

 US vigorous growth on lands which will produce 

 nothing else. But can it be possible that he sa- 

 tisfied tiimseli with an argument so utterly incon- 

 clusive and unsaiistaclorv 7 The experience of 

 my neighbors. General Watts, JVIr. Whitten, Mr. 

 Oliver, and indeed of every observant liirmerof 

 my acquaintance, is ihai old tobacco loisofien refuse 

 to produce tobacco, when they are extremely rich 

 and capable of producing heavily, wtieat, corn 

 and every thing else except the particular crop of 

 which, in common parlance, "they are said to 

 have bei'ome sick.'^ Does the gentleman's rejoin- 

 der meet these facts 1 The casual observer must 

 see at once how utterly he fails to resolve the 

 difficulty. It is so glarini: that it would be a 

 useless waste of ink to dwell upon it. But the 

 ingenious gentleman is wulully gravelled by an- 

 other fact given by Liebig, who states that a 

 Gottingen liirmer planted all his land in worm- 

 wood, and so exhausted the soil of iis potash 

 that it refused to produce grass for several years. 

 The gentleman not fiappening, as in the Roanoke 

 case, " to know a thin<i or two" of Germany, and 

 the clover theory not fining, with more boldness 

 than discretion, seizes the bull by the horns, and 

 says that " it proves just nothing at all." But 

 hold, Mr. Turner, not quite so last. Round as- 

 sertions and bold assumption, without proofs or 

 arguments, won't do. Grass, you say, is not worm- 

 wood, of course it was a change, and you can't 

 conceive why a rotationist should relier to it as 

 authority ; nor can you conceive wh}' worm-wood 

 should incapacitate land from bearing grass. If 

 you had read Liebig, whom you so modesty deride, 

 wiih more care, you would have had your diffi- 

 culties removed, and saved yourself this exposure. 

 He would have taught you that wormwood ex- 

 hausted the land of potash, which is indispensable 

 to (he growth of grass, and you would then have 

 seen that it was a legitimate argument in favor 



