626 



F A R M E R S ' REGISTER 



rNo. 10 



practical agriculturist, from each congressional dis- 

 trict; that their duty should be to meet annually 

 on the same day with the legislature; to sit only 

 weeks, and to receive the same pay for the 

 time as the members of the legislature, to which 

 they should always report, before adjournment, on 

 all such matters as they might deem worthy of le- 

 gislative action. 



A third plan, which in our view promises equal, 

 if not superior advantages to either of the forego- 

 ing, is to employ a competent person, wilh a suffi- 

 cient salary to defray all necessary expenses for 

 two years, whose duty it shall be to make an ag- 

 ricultural survey or critical examination of all the 

 best cultivated parts of the Atlantic states; and to 

 make a written annual report to the legislature of 

 all the most approved methods within each state, 

 of clearing, draining and fertilizing land; of culti- 

 vating, harvesting and preserving the staple crops 

 of the same; of improving, rearing and keeping 

 farming stock of every kind; together with a par- 

 ticular description ol all the best agricultural ma- 

 chines and implements. This would form a body 

 of husbandry as valuable to us Virginians, as the 

 Husbandry of Arthur Young, and the Rural 

 Economy and Agricultural Surveys of Marshall, 

 made under an appointment of the English board 

 of agriculture, proved to the agriculturists of Great 

 Britain. That her agriculture has flourished more, 

 beyond all comparison, since the publication ol 

 those works, than it did for double or quadruple 

 the time before, is a fact universally acknowledged 

 by all who are well informed on the subject; and 

 that a similar work would produce similar effects 

 with us, cannot, we think, admit of a doubt. Ft 

 would soon be in the hands of every farmer and 

 planter who reads with a view to improve in his 

 profession; state pride (so often misdirected and 

 misapplied,) would aid them in using it fbrgoodpur- 

 poses; and it would prove a highly useful manual 

 to young and inexperienced agriculturists, not yet I 

 too wise in their own conceits to profit by "book- 

 farming,'''' as it is contemptuously sty led By man\ 

 of those who can scarcely read the works which 

 they most foolishly affect to despise. 



At present we have no agricultural work similar 

 to those to which we have referred, nor any thing, 

 indeed, comparable with them, although no ima- 

 ginable reason can be offered why we should not 

 have them. It is true we have several very valua- 

 ble agricultural papers, among which we take a 

 pride and a pleasure in naming our own Virginia 

 Farmers' Register. But the information these 

 papers contain is necessarily very miscellaneous; 

 often of little or no importance; insulated and dif- 

 fused at different times over so wide a surface, and 

 mixed up too with so much irrelevant matter, thai 

 to form a connected system of husbandry out oi 

 the whole, properly arranged under distinct heads, 

 would be a labor that very few men, if any one. 

 could be able and qualified to perform, not to insist 

 upon the fact, that none of these periodicals can 

 possibly have yet published all that is known and 

 beneficially practised by the best farmers and plan- 

 ters of the United States. A work of the kind 

 would immediately make every one who read it 

 acquainted with all the improvements in every 

 branch of husbandry throughout the most highly 

 cultivated portions of our country; whereas, for 

 the want of some such publication^ some such au- 

 thentic record of the progress of agricultural sci- 



ence and practice, we find many parts of Virginia, 

 not very distant from each other, almost a century 

 behind other parts in these highly important mat- 

 ters, and still more behind some of the northern 

 and eastern states. All who have travelled 

 through these states within a year or two past, 

 know the foregoing statements to be true to the 

 very letter, however mortifying and degrading the 

 fact maybe in the estimation of every true-hearted 

 Virginian. 



Is it not, therefore, high time that we should 

 take shame to ourselves in regard to the present 

 condition of Virginia husbandry? If ever it is to be 

 done, "now is the accepted time." But to your hon- 

 orable body we must look — to you we must most 

 earnestly appeal to create and apply the necessary 

 stimuli for rousing us from the deadening lethargy 

 which has so long paralyzed all efficient desire lor 

 improvement in the only things which can save 

 our state from sinking to the very bottom of the 

 federal scale, after occupying for so many years the 

 high standing which she once did. These things, 

 we must again repeat, are popular education and 

 internal improvements at the head of which stands 

 agriculture. They should be simultaneously car- 

 ried on, because their action is reciprocal and be- 

 cause they are absolutely essential to the general 

 good, as well as to the purity and preservation of 

 all those republican institutions, to establish which, 

 our venerated patriots of the revolution shed so 

 much treasure, so much blood. 



All which is respectfully submitted. 



JAMES BARBOUR, PreS. 



Edmund Rvffi.fi Sec'y. 



For the Farmers' Register. 



SOME OBSERVATIONS OS THE GOOD EFFECTS 

 OF COVERING THE SOIL. 



Wardsfork, Charlotte County. 



I hold it as a fact, within the reach of the most 

 inattentive observer of nature, that covering soil 

 increases its power to produce. I showed in a 

 former communication, the good effects of covering 

 against the action of frost: I will now, in the first 

 place, endeavor to show that the covering of soil 

 prevents the bad effects of beating rains. It is un- 

 necessary to prove that the land is run together by 

 beating rains, and that this running together gives 

 an evident check to the growth of the crop. 

 Whether this effect is occasioned by closing the 

 pores of the earth, or by preventing the inhalation 

 ol' invigorating properties from the air; or by stop- 

 ping the rise of moisture from below; or by pre- 

 venting the easy extension of roots — such is the 

 fact. It is equally clear to me, that covering the 

 soil will prevent the above mentioned injury — for it 

 may be seen where litter is thrown over the sur- 

 face of the ground, the soil underneath is kept in 

 a soft, mellow state, peculiarly prepared for pro- 

 duction. Let a vine or weed find its way through 

 this litter, and how rapidly and luxuriantly it 

 grows. Compare these with vines or weeds glow- 

 ing on the adjacent ground ! When a hasty rain 

 falls on grass or weeds or litter, the drops of course 

 strike the covering first, and their force is broken, 

 and the water only trickles into the earth. The 

 more gradually the ground is made wet, and tbe 

 lighter the drops, the less it runs the land together. 



