CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 24 1 



other had such wide-spret*d early effects in affecting opinion, and stimulating 

 to exertion and attempts for improvement. The ground had before no occu- 

 pant, and therefore this work had to contend with no rival. The larger 

 land-owners, of lower Virginia especially, had previously treated their own 

 proper employment, and their only source of income, with total neglect; and 

 very few country gentlemen took any personal and regular direction of 

 their farming operations. It was considered enough for them to hire over- 

 seers, (and that class then was greatly inferior in grade and respectability to 

 what it is now,) and to leave the daily superintendence to them entirely. 

 The agricultural practices, and also the products, were consequently, and 

 almost universally, at a very low ebb. The work of Taylor appeared when 

 these evils had become manifest ; and it was received with a welcome which 

 in warmth was proportioned to the magnitude of the evil, and to the exag- 

 geration of the promises of speedy and effectual remedy which the author 

 made, with entire good faith no doubt, but which proved any thing but 

 true to the great majority of his sanguine followers. 



Of course, I was among the most enthusiastic admirers of ' Arator ;' and 

 not only received as sound and true every opinion and precept, but even 

 went beyond the author's intention, (perhaps,) and applied his rules, for 

 tillage to lands of surface and soil altogether different from the level and 

 originally rich sandy soils of the Rappahannock, where his labors and system 

 had been so successful. However, this error was by no means confined 

 to myself; for his other disciples fully as much misunderstood the directions, 

 and misapplied the practices. 



It was my main object to enrich my then very poor land ; and for that, 

 Taylor offered means that seemed to be sure and speedy. According to his 

 views, it was only necessary to protect the arable land from all grazing, and 

 thus let the vegetable cover of the land, when resting, serve as manure— to 

 plough deep, and in ridges— to convert all the corn-stalks and other offal 

 to manure, and plough it under, unrotted, for the corn— to put the farm 

 under clover as fast as manured— and the desired result would be sure. I 

 hoped at first to be able to manure, say 10 or 12 acres a year very heavily, 

 with the barn-yard manure, and expected that such manuring would give 

 a crop of 50 bushels of corn to the acre. The space, so enriched, when in 

 the succeeding crop of wheat, would be laid under clover— and its acquired 

 productiveness be made permanent, by the lenient rotation of two crops 

 only taken from the land in four years. But utter disappointment followed. 

 The manure was put on the poorest (and naturally poor) land ; and it 

 produced very little of the expected effect in the first course of crops, and 

 was scarcely to be perceived on the second. Clover could not be made to 

 live on land of this kind ; and even on much better, or where more 

 enriched, it was a very precarious crop, and which, where the growth was 

 best, was certain to yield the entire occupancy of the ground to natural 

 weeds after one year. The general non-grazing of the fields under grass, 

 or rather under weeds, produced no visible enriching effect, and the 

 ploughing of hilly land (as mine mostly was) into ridges, caused the most 

 destructive washing away of the soil by heavy rains. These results were 

 not speedily made manifest; and before being convinced of their certainty, 

 I had labored for four or five years in using these means of supposed im- 

 provement of the soil, but all of which proved either profitless, entirely 

 useless, or absolutely and in some cases greatly injurious. And even after 

 trying to avoid the first known errors, and using all other supposed means 

 for giving durable and increasing fertility to my worn and poor fields, at 

 the end of six years, instead of having already achieved great improve- 

 ment, 1 was compelled to confess that no part of my poor land was more 



