304 On Indian CorUy Potatoes^ ^c. 



The origin of this error is obvious to me ; viz. 

 Maize being a very powerful plant, is capable of con- 

 tending with an impoverished soil ; and when tolera- 

 bly cultivated, will remunerate the planter on grounds 

 incapable of producing crops of almost any other de- 

 scription, equally valuable, and the farmer abuses this 

 plant, because it continues faithful until the last dying 

 gasp of the soil, which his avarice has destroyed. But 

 it is strange, that men of observation and reflection, 

 viewing the effect without sufficiently examining the 

 cause, have adopted the opinion of the exhausting pro- 

 perties of the corn plant. It is generally agreed, that 

 potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, are meliorating crops; 

 notwithstanding it is known, that neither of those crops 

 will grow on a thin soil, without the assistance of 

 manure, and that if they are continued year after 

 year, (or grown in rotation with others,) without ma- 

 nure, the soil will soon become incapable of producing 

 either of those plants, so as to pay for the gathering of 

 them. This furnishes a striking contrast between 

 those justly esteemed meliorating crops, and the corn 

 plant; for after the former cannot be grown with tolera- 

 ble advantage, crops of maize, sufficiently productive 

 to induce the continuation of them, may be introduc- 

 ed on the same injured soil, without additional manure : 

 but the fact is, that all the crops that will admit per- 

 fect horse hoeing or hand hoeing, may be justly con- 

 sidered meliorating, and also some others, which do 

 not admit this after cultivation, but form a shade suffi- 

 ciently close to destroy weeds. But it has been well 

 established, that some of the most luxuriant of those 

 crops are great exhausters of the soil; yet they are just- 



