CALCAREOUS MANURES— THEORY. 21 



to plant another. No manure was applied, except on the tobacco lots; 

 and this succession of a grain crop every year, and afterwards every 

 second year, was kept up as \onix as the field would produce five bushels of 

 corn to the acre. When reduced below that product, and to still more below 

 the necessary expense of cultivation, the land was turned out to recover under 

 a new growth of pines. After twenty or thirty years, according to the 

 convenience of the owner, the same land would be again cleared, and put 

 under similar scourging tillage, which, however, would then much^ sooner 

 end, as before, in exhaustion. Such a general system is not yet every 

 where abandoned ; and many years have not passed, since such was the 

 usual course on almost every farm. 



How much our country has been impoverished during the last fifty years, 

 cannot be determined by any satisfactory testimony. But, however we 

 may differ on this head, there are but few who will not concur in the 

 opinion, that [up to 1831] our system of cultivation has been every year les- 

 sening the productive power of our lands in general— and that no one county, 

 no neighborhood, and but k\v particular farms, have been at all enriched, 

 since their first settlement and cultivation. Yet many of our farming ope- 

 rations have been much improved and made more productive. Driven 

 by necessity, proprietors direct more personal attention to their farms— better 

 implements of husbandry are used— every process is more perfectly per- 

 formed—and, whether well or ill directed, a spirit of inquiry and enterprise 

 has been awakened, which before had no existence. 



Throughout the country below the falls of the river, and perhaps thirty 

 miles above, if the best land be excluded, say one tenth, the remaining nine 

 tenths will not yield an average product of ten bushels of corn to the acre ; 

 though that grain is best suited to our soils in general, and far exceeds in 

 quantity all other kinds raised. Of course, the product of a large propor- 

 tion of the land would fall below this average. Such crops, in very many 

 cases, cannot remunerate the cultivator. If our remaining wood-land could 

 be at once brought into cultivation, the gross product of the country would 

 be greatly increased, but the net product very probably diminished; as the 

 general poverty of these lands would cause more expense than profit to 

 accompany their cultivation under the usual system. Yet every year we 

 are using all our exertions to clear wood-land, and in fact seldom increase 

 either net or gross products — because nearly as much old exhausted land 

 is turned. out of cultivation as is substituted by the newly cleared. Sound 

 calculations of profit and loss, would induce us even greatly to reduce the 

 extent of our present cultivation, in lower Virginia, by turning out and 

 leaving waste, (if not to be improved.) every acre that yields less than the 

 total cost of its tillage.* 



No political truth is better established than that the population of every 

 country will increase, or diminish, according to its regular supply of food. 

 We know from the census of 1830, compared with those of 1820 and 

 1810, that our population is nearly stationary, and in some counties is ac- 

 tually lessening; and therefore it is certain that [to 1830] our agriculture is 

 not increasing the amount of food, or the means of purchasing food — with all 

 the assistance of the new land annually brought under culture. In these cir- 



•The foregoinq: description was writlen in 1826, and liist published in 1S31, and 

 particular exceptions to the general correctness of the application had been even then 

 recently exhibited ; and, with the passaj^e of eveiy year since, these exceptions have 

 been becoming more numerous and more impertant, and in a rapidly increasing ratio. 

 These recent facts of improved lands and increased production, as well as their peculiar 

 causes, will be treated of subsequently. The observations and deductions presented 

 in the remainder of this chapter were also of the same date as the foregoing statements, 

 on which they are founded. 



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