274 



Tobacco around Peach Trees. 



Vol. VIII. 



proportion to the land they own, as in ours? 

 Many in the Southern States, owners of 

 hundreds of acres, have not money enough 

 to buy a new saddle ; resembling in their 

 condition, that of a man who may be sup- 

 posed to perish with cold in the midst of a 

 forest, for want of a spark of lire, or a steel 

 and flint to strike one. Hence the great 

 value of labour saving machinery in our 

 country ; and as necessity has been aptly 

 called the mother of invention, no country 

 has displayed so much ingenuity as ours, in 

 the invention of contrivances to economise 

 labour. 



Far from being behind hand in the art of 

 agricultural improvement, no people on the 

 globe excel us in agricultural knowledge ; 

 nor has any made greater improvement in 

 comparison with the labour at the command 

 of the farmer. Every one understands for 

 example, the paramount importance of in- 

 creasing his pile of manure ; but in no one 

 thing is the dearness of labour so much felt 

 as in the quantity of it which is required to 

 collect the materials for manure, and to haul 

 out and distribute it after it is made. Herein 

 consists the great value of gypsum on lands 

 to which it is congenial ; for on some, as for 

 instance on the Eastern shore of Virginia 

 and Maryland, owing perhaps to their allu- 

 vion soil or saline atmosphere, or to both, it 

 is said to have but little effect; while in 

 other parts of both these States, its effect is 

 absolutely magical. The very small quan 

 tity required — a bushel to the acre — and the 

 quickness with which it is applied, has ar 

 rested the progress of exhaustion in some of 

 the counties, which, before it was introduced, 

 were on the high road to ruin. In some 

 other respects its effects have been remark 

 able. It has been the cause, in Prince 

 George's county for example, of i'ncreasing 

 the possessions and fortune of landholders, 

 and diminishing the aggregate population. 

 The rapidity with which large bodies of the 

 poorest could be converted into tobacco land, 

 yielding 1,000 weight to the acre, the high 

 price of that article, and the improvements 

 in the implements and modes of culture, by 

 which planters have come to make four or 

 five hogsheads " to the hand," enabled the 

 enterprising land proprietor and slave owner, 

 to make his land, purchased on time, pay 

 for Itself. Thus, small proprietors of land, 

 owning few or no slaves, were bought out, 

 and moved away to the west ; large estates 

 have been accumulated by individuals, while 

 the actual population of that county, perhaps 

 the most productive in the State, and within 

 striking of Baltimore, with its population of 

 100,000 inha'bitants, and bordering on the 

 cities of the District of Columbia, has di- 



minished from 20,216 in 1620, to 19,539 in 

 1840. 



The following are among many similar 

 cases to show the operation of the influences 

 to which I have referred; the facts are stated 

 on indubitable authority. The late governor, 

 Robert Bowie, a man of singular energy of 

 character and of the higliest moral worth, 

 at the time and under the state of things 

 already referred to, purchased two hundred 

 acres of poor " broom sedge land," for $1400. 

 He put half of it in corn, and probably ga- 

 thered not more than 10 or 1.5 bushels to 

 the acre; sowed it down to oats the next 

 spring, and on them sowed clover and plas- 

 ter of Paris, or gypsum. Plastered the clo- 

 ver the succeeding spring, and the spring 

 following planted in tobacco, and sold from 

 it 100,000 weight at $10 per hundred; 

 making $10,000 for half of the land, which 

 three years before he had purchased, proba- 

 bly "on time," for $1400! Many similar 

 instances might be given of the effects of 

 plaster of Paris, in producing all the re- 

 sults I have stated, but I am wandering 

 from my subject. 



Much and effectively as our ingenuity 

 has been taxed in the invention of every 

 expedient to save labour, it seems to me 

 that there is one means of augmenting our 

 crops of grass in a manner as wonderful or 

 at least as great as the effect of plaster of 

 Paris on cultivated crops — which is much 

 practised in some parts of Europe, but 

 strano'ely neglected in a country, where of 

 all others, circumstances invite the use of 

 it — I mean irrigation. I. S. S. 



Washington, Jan. 1st, 1844. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Tobacco around Peach Trees. 



To THF, Editor, — I have read with inte- 

 rest in different numbers of the Cabinet, 

 articles respecting the depredations of the 

 insect jEgeria Exiliosa, upon the peach 

 tree ; and have seen various remedies pro- 

 posed. I too, am induced to offer one, as 

 simple, as I believe it is effectual, viz.: an 

 application of tobacco in the following man- 

 ner. In the latter part of spring or early 

 part of summer, scrape the earth from 

 around the body of the tree, to the depth of 

 one to three inches, being particularly care- 

 ful not to injure the crown of the roots; fill 

 the cup thus formed with trash tobacco from 

 the shojj^, and envelope the boll of the tree 

 to the height of three or four inches, with 

 the stems or leaves. I do not offer this as a 

 means to renovate a diseased tree, but as a 

 preventive, the efficiency of which has been 

 tested for nineteen years, by Samuel Wood, 



