PREFACE TO THi: THIRD EDITION. 



The rapid proiiress of improvement made by the use of calcareous manures, 

 as well as the many misdhected and less edlctive attempts to obtain such re- 

 sults, together witb the acquisition of much recent and extended information on 

 the subject, all concur in requiring the new and enlarged edition of ibe Essay on 

 Calcareous Manures, which the author now ofiers to the agricultural public. 



In the few years which have passed since the issue ol fhe jirecediny edition, 

 it is believed that the use of marl and lime, in lower Virginia, has been ex- 

 tended over thrice as much land as had been previously thus improved ; and the 

 Erevious clear income of the farmers thus fertilizinii their lands has probably 

 een already thereby increased in amount by several hundreds of thousands of 

 dollars, and the intrinsic value of the lands raised by as many millions. These 

 great augmentations of annual profits and of the true value of landed capital, 

 from this single source, if they could be accurately estimated, would be seen to 

 have produced an important item of additional revenue to the treasury of the 

 commonwealth. And these additions of wealth to individuals and to the state, 

 would be obvious as well as real, but for the existence o^ other circumstances 

 which have operated to counteract or to disguise the proper results- The most 

 important of such influences will be merely referred to here in the cursory man- 

 ner only that the occasion permits. 



In the first place— besides the deservedly very low appreciation of all lands in 

 Virginia'^ founded on the smallness of their products, the market prices were 

 formerly still more reduced by the almost universal urgent desire of proprietors 

 to sell, that they might be enabled then to emigrate to the new and rich lands of 

 the west. The impossibility of selling, even at the lowest valuation pric ', was 

 the only thing which prevented the actual Hood of emigration being so much 

 more swelled as to leave half our lands unoccupied and waste. If purchasers 

 had but presented themselves, fully half the farms in Prince George county (and 

 ii is presumed of many other counties) might have been boughi up at a considera- 

 ble deduction from the lowest estimated value ; and all the sellers would have re- 

 moved, with all their capital, to the western wilderness, fo the then actual and 

 regular flow ol emigration from the now marling disirict, an eH'ectual barrifr has 

 been opposed by the introduction of that mode o!' improvement. All emigration 

 has ceased wherever by trial of this means the cultivators of the land found their 

 labors to be richly repaid. Thus, in estimating the gains of individuals and of 

 the state, on this score, the comparison should be made, not with the value of 

 property and population which remained twenty years ago, but with Avhat would 

 have remained now, if the then existing inducements to emigration had conti- 

 nued to go on and to increase, as they would have done, with time. 



Next — the actual increase of intrinsic value of marled lands is far from being 

 even yet fully appreciated, because of the generally prevailing and very erroneous 

 modjs of estimating the values of the increase of permanent net income Irom 

 land, (as lw\\\ be made manifest in a part of this essay — ) and but few even of 

 those persons who have obtained such values by marling their lands, would esti- 

 mate them at one-fourth of their true amount. The source of any permanent 

 net increase of only S;6 of annual income from land, adds .§100 to the intrinsic 

 value of the land. And this proposition is not the less true, and to the full ex- 

 tent asserted, even though the estimate of private purchasers and se lers, and of 

 public assessors of lands, may all count for the market prii'C but a small propor- 

 tion of the increased real value. 



Next— even whatever of new appreciation the foregoing influences might have 

 permitted to be exhibited in the increased market jirice of lands, and still more 

 their new real value, have been disguised, or altogether concealed, by the great 

 and frequent fluctuations of all market prices of property, and by the general mis- 

 directions of capital and industry, all caused by the universal individual and na- 

 tional gambling (whether voluntary or compulsory,) at the maddening and ruinous 



