34 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



[No. 1. 



duces good crops, must have been, originally 

 very fine, or have been made good. II' it was 

 originally good, I venture to say it is now worse, 

 unless improved by art. Will Mr. Fife say, that, 

 after repeated consecutive cultivation by that mi- 

 nister of desolation, the shovel plough, ir is as 

 good as when first the forest was lelled? Can he 

 venture such a declaration in the face of the whole 

 earth? The testimony of every man — of every 

 ''beast that bites the grass or browses on the shrub" 

 will confront and confound him. I will not at- 

 tempt to prove what is universally known to be 

 true, that all land — land of every grade of fertility, 

 of every geological base, from barren sand to the 

 deep and inexhaustible beds of alluvion on the 

 shores of the Mississippi, deteriorates under the 

 cultivation of corn, cotton, tobacco and other 

 spring crops, which require the earth to be kept 

 pulverized until the plant is matured. But, it de- 

 teriorates in a greater or less degree as the land is 

 poorer or richer. The thin soil of sand hills van- 

 ishes in the third crop of corn, cotton or tobacco; 

 while the soil of the Mississippi, the Red River, 

 the Yazoo or Big Black, twenty feet deep, cannot 

 be exhausted till the bottom be reached; for as 

 the vegetable mould of which it is composed 

 sinks beneath the exhausting action of the sun, 

 the plough descends with it to a bed not hereto- 

 fore disturbed. It may be, that land in the torrid 

 zone, of the same base, is not so much injured by 

 cultivation as in our latitude. The rains of that 

 region are more frequent, and dews manifold 

 more copious than in Virginia The moisture of a 

 southern atmosphere is, also, a part, and a lead- 

 ing part of its natural history. Here our summers 

 are dry, and the sun more intense than far south of 

 us. They are, at stated hours of the day, re- 

 freshened, by steady breezes from the sea always 

 charged with invigorating salt-water vapor; and 

 at night their copious dews impart a delightful 

 coolness to the air. Here we have, occasionally, 

 slight breezes — generally dry; slight dews till late 

 in the summer, and hot nights. In the north the 

 land is not galled as here, in part owing to three 

 causes about equal in their effects: — the sun af- 

 fects us two months longer in the year than it docs 

 them— their land is better cultivated, and there is 

 no negro labor to beget idleness and its handmaids, 

 shovel ploughs, new hopes and disappointed ex- 

 pectations, rags and debt. 



It is known to all, that one of the principal 

 means of improving worn out land, is the mould- 

 board ploughs, the bar-shares of my friends and 

 countrymen, McCormick, Stewart, Kemper, 

 Fletcher and Green. The benefit is derived, in 

 my opinion, from various causes. The earth 

 which has been exhausted by the sun is turned 

 under, where it is kept till the next fallow, while 

 the loam or other soil never before reached by the 

 plough is thrown to the top, where, from the ac- 

 tion of the sun, rain and atmosphere, noxious 

 principles are expelled or neutralized, or those that 

 are valuable are imbibed. I suppose that Mr. 

 Fife did not understand me to say, that the eun, 

 in all the degrees of its influence on the earth, is 

 injurious. 



All crops that require frequent ploughing in the 

 spring and summer, corn, cotton, tobacco, tur- 

 nips, &c, have the character of exhausting crops, 

 when others that yield as much in weight are 

 known not to impoverish the ground: for instance, 



wheat and rye. If it were not the mode and pe- 

 riod of cultivation that does the injury, principally 

 by exposure to the sun, all crops of equal weight 

 would reasonably do equal harm. The universal 

 testimony of experience is, however, that corn, 

 cotton, tobacco and turnips, are exhausting, and, 

 that wheat and rye are improving crops. What 

 other cause than the mode of cultivation can in- 

 duce so great an injury? The repeated plough- 

 ingSj erroneously deemed to be necessary to make 

 thesa crops, renders the earth so light or loose as 

 to receive the heat of the sun to the depth of the 

 ploughing. The top earth is most injured because 

 most exposed to the sun, and after it has been 

 subjected to his rays for some time, another sur- 

 face is thrown up by another ploughing, and so 

 on, till the whole body ploughed for corn, &c. is 

 successively operated upon, and finally, the whole 

 is left open for years before it regains its former 

 compactness. Clay from the bottom of wells, 

 cellars, &c. after a few years produces luxuriantly. 



As to Mr. Fife's notion that the mixing of wa- 

 ter with earth destroys the fertility of the earth, I 

 can say no more, than it i* the first time 1 ever 

 heard that water was not a valuable, nay, an in- 

 dispensable agent in the growth of vegetables. 

 Heat is also indispensable; but too much of either 

 destroys vegetable lite; and "mortar" contains too 

 much of the former. It is true, that by mixing 

 water and earth more intimately than by the usu- 

 al falling of rain, when dried it is harder; but no 

 other injury can be done by the admixture. If it 

 can, the more rain the greater the injury; and 

 what then becomes of the well established lact of 

 the fertilizing properties of water? The bottoms 

 of rivers and ponds too would be very poor instead 

 of being very rich. Roads that have been used 

 for seventy years, although trampled thousands of 

 times more than mortar for bricks, it is every day's 

 practice to reclaim by the usual methods of im- 

 provements. Let me here make the conjecture, 

 that if the dust of hard burnt bricks be subjected 

 to the same means of improvement with well 

 trodden roads or dried "mortar," that the end will 

 be a thorough conviction of the impracticability of 

 the one, and the easy accomplishment of the other. 



Mr. Fife is respectfully advised to visit north 

 Alabama, (the great bend of the Tennessee,) a 

 country of as high reputation for fertility, a few 

 years ago, as any in the south, and see for himself) 

 its present thriftless condition. Originally, indeed, 

 not more than fifteen years ago, very rich, of dark 

 red loam, with a surface among the most beautiful 

 and convenient for the purposes of agriculture on 

 earth; the effects of the sun upon it, exposed as it 

 has been by shallow ploughing, have been ruin- 

 ous. Corn and cotton have thus ruined that, as 

 com and tobacco have this country. Again let 

 Mr. Fife tjo into the Dutch settlements of Rock- 

 ingham, Shenandoah, Loudoun: to Pennsylvania, 

 New Jersey, and New York, where they have to 

 a very small extent cultivated corn; where wheat 

 and rye are the staples and are produced abun- 

 dantly, and he will see the difference between 

 those regions, and the land of corn, tobacco, and 

 cotton. 



It is generally thought that the hickory, lombar- 

 dy poplar, &c. exhaust the earth, and that the 

 yellow locust improves it. The instances cited 

 are where the land is cultivated in corn or other 

 spring crops. The earth under the former is gene- 



