20 ' CALCAREOUS MANURES-THEORY. 



mains under its native growth. Enough, however, has been cleared and 

 cultivated in every neighborhood to prove its utter worthlessness under 

 common management. The soils of ridge lands vary between sandy loam 

 and clayey loam. It is difficult to estimate their general product under cul- 

 tivation; but judging from my own experience of such soils, the product 

 may be from five bushels of corn, or as much of wheat, to the acre on the 

 most clayey soils, to twelve bushels of corn, and less than three of wheat, 

 on the most sandy— if wheat were there attempted to be made. 



The slopes extend from the ridges to the streams, or to the alluvial bot- 

 toms, and include the whole interval between neighboring branches of the 

 same stream. This class of soils forms another great body of lands, of 

 a higher grade of fertility, though still far from valuable. It is generally 

 more sandy than the poorer ridge land, and when long cultivated is more 

 or less deprived of its soil, by the washing of rains, on every slight declivity. 



The washing away of three or four inches in depth exposes a sterile 

 subsoil, (or forms a " gall,") which continues thenceforth bare of all vegeta- 

 tion. A greater declivity of the surface serves to form gullies several feet 

 in depth, the earth carried from which, covers and injures the adjacent lower 

 land. Most of this kind of land has been cleared and greatly exhausted. 

 Its virgin growth is often more of oak, hickory, and dogwood, than pine; 

 but when turned out of cultivation, an unmixed growth of pine follows. 

 Land of this kind in general has very little durability. Its best usual product 

 of corn may be, for a few crops, eighteen or twenty bushels— and even as 

 much as twenty-five bushels, from the highest grade. Wheat is seldom a 

 productive or profitable crop -on the slopes, the soil being generally too 

 sandy. When such soils as these are called rich or valuable (as most per- 

 sons would describe them,) those terms must be considered as only com- 

 parative; and such an application of them proves that truly fertile and 

 valuable soils are very scarce in lower Virginia. 



The only very rich and durable soils below the falls of our rivers are 

 narrow strips of high-land along their banks, and the low-lands formed by 

 the alluvion of the numerous smaller streams which water our country.* 

 These alluvial bottoms, though highly productive, are lessened in value by 

 being generally too sandy, and by the damage they suffer from being often 

 inundated by floods of rain. The best high-land soils seldom extend more 

 than half a mile from the river's edge — sometimes not fifty yards. These 

 irregular margins are composed of loams of various qualities, but all highly 

 valuable ; and the best soils are scarcely to be surpassed in their original 

 fertility, and durability under severe tillage. Their nature and peculiarities 

 will be again adverted to, and more fully described hereafter. 



The simple statement of the general course of tillage to which this part 

 of the country has been subjected is sufficient to prove that great impover- 

 ishment of the soil has been the inevitable consequence. The small portion 

 of rich river margins, was soon all cleared, and was tilled without cessation 

 for many years. The clearing of the slopes was next commenced, and is 

 not yet entirely completed. On these soils, the succession of crops was less 

 rapid, or, from necessity, tillage was sooner suspended. If not rich enough 

 for tobacco when first cleared, (or as soon as it ceased to be so,) land of 

 this kind was planted in corn two or three years in succession, and after- 

 wards every second year. The intermediate year between the crops of 

 corn, the field was " rested" under a crop of wheat, if it would produce 

 four or five bushels to the acre. If the sandiness, or exhausted condition 

 of the soil, denied even this small product of wheat, that crop was pro- 

 bably not attempted; and, instead of it, the field was exposed to close 

 grazing, from the time of gathering one crop of corn, to that of preparing 



