238 CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPKNDIX. 



year, and is put under field peas the same year. The red, or cow pea, is 

 preferred, being considered most profitable for live stock ; and as that is a 

 late kind, it should be planted as soon as possible after the 20th of / pril, 

 that the crop may inature. Two after ploughings and one slight hand weed- 

 ing serve to cultivate the crop; and its product, Mr. L. thinks, though, with- 

 out having made any experiment or careful estimate, usually pays the whole 

 expense of the liming."— F. Register, vol. i. p. 18. 



The shells sold to the farmers are obtained at the various landings on 

 York and the lower James river and their tributaries, where oysters are 

 opened in great quantities for sale. On some of the lands bordering the 

 Potomac, there are much cheaper and universal sources of supply, in ancient 

 accumulation, of shells called " Indian banks," and which are now used to 

 burn lime from for manure for farms in the Northern Neck. Very recently 

 there has been brought into use a new source of supply on "James river. 

 This is the 3'-oung living oysters and old shells which together form entire 

 shoals in some parts of the river, and which are raked up in mass to load 

 the vessels. These shells are sold at 50 cents the hogshead or less. As 

 these are mostly small and thin shells, they could more easily than ordinary 

 shells be pulverized by a mill-stone running on its circumference, as in a 

 tanner's bark mill; and in this manner all the rich animal matter would be 

 preserved, which is destroyed by burning. 



NOTE tX. 



ON THE SOURCES OF MALARIA, OR OP AUTUMNAL DISEASES, IN VIRGINIA, AND THE 

 MEANS OF REMEDY AND PREVENTION. 



{From the Farmers'' Register of Jul/,', 1838.) 



Throughout the course of publication of the Farmers' Register, it has 

 been one of the main objects of the editor to attract attention to the causes 

 and effects of malaria, or unhealthy marsh effiuvia, and to enforce his views 

 as to the means of restraining or preventing this greatest of the evils under 

 which the eastern half of Virginia suffers. To forward this end, every fit 

 opportunity has been availed of; and tlie subject has been treated, directly 

 and at length, or incidentally and slightly, in various articles in these vo- 

 lumes. But there has been found but little if any encouragement to perse- 

 vere in this course. The editor has, alone, and Vvithout any certain evidence 

 of approval of his views and his course, and certainly without any practical 

 adoption of his recommendations, labored in this cause, which, to his un- 

 derstanding, demands the support of all, on considerations of economy and 

 agricultural improvement and profit, as well as on the more important 

 grounds of the strength or frailty of the tenure by which the people of half 

 of our entire territory possess and enjoy health, happiness, and even life. 

 It is under such impressions of the high importance of the whole subject, 

 that the readers of this journal are again invited to its consideration ; and, 

 probably, for the last time, by the present writer, if there continues to be no 

 more interest excited, and action produced, in regard to the evils existing, 

 and which are multiplied ten-fold in power by the ignorant and careless 

 legislation of this commonwealth. 



The views of the writer on this subject were presented generally, and at 

 some length, in an editorial article (pp. 41 to 43) in vol. v.. Farmers' Regis- 

 ter, on the causes of and means for preventing the formation and the effects 

 of malaria in eastern Virginia ; and also in sundry shorter incidental pas- 



