152 CALCAREOUS MANURES-PRACTICE. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE PROGRESS OF MARLING IN VIRGINIA. 



My task is at last completed. Whether I shall be able to persuade my 

 countrymen to prize the treasures, and seize the profits which are within 

 their reach, or wliether my testimony and arguments shall be fruitless, 

 soon or late, a time must arrive when my expectations will be realized. 

 The use of calcareous manures is destined to change a large portion of 

 the soil of lower Virginia from barrenness to fertility ; which, added to the 

 advantages we already possess — our navigable waters and convenient 

 markets, the facility of tilling our lands, and the choice of crops offered by 

 our climate — will all concur to increase ten-fold the present value of our 

 land, and produce more farming profit than has been found elsewhere on 

 soils far more favored by nature. Population, wealth and learning, will 

 keep pace with the improvement of the soil ; and we or our children will 

 have reason to rejoice, not only as farmers; but as Virginians, and as 

 patriots. 



Such, as appear in the last paragraph, were the concluding words of this 

 essay, as published in 1832, and precisely as the work had been prepared for 

 the press several years before that publication was made. Such was then 

 the language of hope and anticipation. It may now be both interesting and 

 useful to examine to what extent such hopes and sanguine anticipations 

 have been yet realized. 



Every new and great improvement in agriculture has had to work its 

 way slowly and in opposition to every possible discouragement and ob- 

 stacle. It would seem that the agricultural classes were, of all classes and 

 professions, always the least ready to receive benefit from instruction — the 

 most distrustful of instructers and the least thankful for their services — 

 even after the benefit is the most completely proved, and established by ac- 

 tual practice and unquestionable facts. The novel improvement by marling 

 has not been an exception to this universal rule. But still, it may be con- 

 fidently asserted, that no other agricultural improvement has been so ra- 

 pidly extended, so widely and generally received in such short time, or 

 has been so generally and greatly profitable to all who have availed them- 

 selves of the benefits thereby offered to their acceptance. When my first 

 trials were made in 1818, so far as I then knew, I had no forerunner in 

 success. For the few and small known and long abandoned experiments, 

 and the opinions deduced therefrom, stood as warnings against, and not in 

 the least as inducements to repetition ; and the then actually proceeding 

 use of marl, silent and unknown, but successful, had not even been heard 

 of A few more years served to dispel all doubts of those who had tried or 

 could witness the results of the applications of marl. Still, ignorance of 

 the mode of operation has not been dispelled by the knowledge of the great 

 benefits of marl ; and therefore the grossest errors of practice accom- 

 panied and greatly lessened the full advantages of the continually extend- 

 ing use of marl. It required but little time for all to learn and submit to 

 the one main and simple instruction, "apply marl;" but few would consent 

 to learn any thing else, or would believe that there was any thing else 

 necessary to learn or to do, except merely to " apply marl." They would 

 not learn from any thing but their own dearly bought experience of error. 

 And very many have thus learned, and have paid the cost to their own 

 pecuniary interest of thousands of dollars in value — whether of delay, of 



